Moments of Grace - Season Three, Act One: The Road Less Travelled
by Parlanchina
Summary: Just when she thought she'd found a team she could stick with, everything at the BAU starts falling apart. Can Grace keep it together while her friends go off the rails? Just what will Reid make of her less traditional talents? Can he get past her refusal to obey the laws of physics, or will this be the end of their friendship? AU, part four of the Moments of Grace series.
1. Doubt

**Essential Listening – Bright College Days, Tom Lehrer**

**0o0**

Hit the ground running. That was the important thing in a case like this.

They had rolled out almost as soon as Flagstaff had called SSA Jennifer Jareau, the communications liaison for the team, but it still felt like they were scrambling to catch up.

The jet had barely hit the tarmac in Arizona and a representative of the local Police Department was already there, waiting for them. He greeted JJ, as usual the first point of contact with the team.

"Jim Griffiths," he introduced himself, shaking her hand.

"Hi – Jennifer Jareau. Thanks for meeting us here."

"Thanks for takin' this on so quickly."

"Yeah. The faster we get here, the faster we can help stave off panic," JJ told him.

She moved ahead as he nodded, "I hear that."

SSA Doctor Spencer Reid fell into step with Griffiths, just ahead of SSAs Derek Morgan, Emily Prentiss and Grace Pearce.

"What can you tell us about the university?" Reid asked.

"It's small, tight-knit," Griffiths told him. "Dorms are still single sex. Draws from all over the country, but students are mostly the arty type."

"Have you increased uniform presence on campus?" Morgan asked.

"Yeah, doubled it."

Grace nodded. A sensible precaution, but rather like giving the UnSub free reign if he was in one of those uniforms.

"Any other measures?" Prentiss asked.

"I got security shuttles running twenty-four seven and as of tonight I've imposed a ten o'clock curfew."

"Are the students likely to stick to it?" Grace asked.

"I hope so," said Griffiths. "They're all terrified. Any chance we can reduce this guy's victim pool, I'll take it."

_Every measure has a downside_, Grace reflected, as they strode across the airstrip, still hot on a late spring evening. A curfew might reduce the number of potential victims, but it also reduced the number of potential witnesses – increasing the opportunities to kill.

Still, you couldn't have everything. At least he was taking sensible precautions.

"We'll need a corner of your precinct so we can set up shop," said SSA Aaron Hotchner, coming up behind them.

"You got it," said Griffiths. "You need to get to the hotel first?"

"No," said SSA Jason Gideon. Everyone glanced at him; it was the first thing he'd said in hours. "Spree killings in a confined area are a race. He's racin' to kill as many as he can – we're racin' to stop him."

They piled into the cars, taking off towards campus at speed. Grace watched her senior agent in the wing mirror of the passenger seat. The whole team knew that Gideon was back at work too soon after Sarah's death, the same way they knew that they'd be doing just the same if it were them.

He was understandably quiet and moody, and – at times – worryingly unsure.

They were all acting like they hadn't noticed, supporting him as best they could.

Grace hoped it would be enough.

0o0o0o0

Griffiths had got the call en route to the precinct and half the team had immediately changed course. Here was another girl they'd been too late to save. With any luck, this would be the last one in Arizona – at least for this week.

Climbing out of the SUV, JJ wished that a statement like that could be used a little more generally

_But then we'd be out of a job_, she thought, and pretended that she didn't think that this would be a good thing.

Griffiths was standing in the centre of the cordon, arms folded, glaring at the corpse as if he could find her killer if only he looked at her long enough. There were a few students around the edges of the tape, but for tonight it seemed that most of the residents of Arizona College, Flagstaff, were obeying their curfew.

The young woman was lying prone on the ground, her hair arranged neatly, her hands crossed and placed on her chest. There was a lot of blood, and a _lot_ of stab wounds. Someone had really gone to town on the poor kid.

"I've got men at every exit point on campus," Griffiths announced as they ducked beneath the crime scene tape.

"She had her mace out, but she didn't use it," JJ observed, frowning. "And it's well-lit. He's not afraid of being seen."

"How often do the shuttles run?" Morgan asked.

"Every ten minutes."

"Were all the other victims posed like this? With their arms crossed?" JJ enquired. She crouched beside the body, taking in the number and ferocity of the stab wounds.

"Yeah," Griffiths confirmed. "Why?"

"It's a classic sign of remorse," Morgan told him. "The UnSub kills the victim and then immediately feels bad about it, so he poses them like this so they'll rest in peace."

Griffiths tore his eyes from the corpse, astonished.

"You can tell that just from the arms?"

"That's why you called us here," Morgan pointed out. "To build a psychological profile of the killer."

"How long will it take your men to clear the scene?" Gideon asked.

JJ tried to gauge his expression. His movements had been abrupt since they landed, as if he was distracted. She got the impression that he was trying hard to stay focussed, keep moving forward.

"A few hours."

"We're lucky there's a curfew," JJ remarked. "Otherwise there'd be a mob scene."

"Have Hotch set up at the Police Department," Gideon told her. "We'll run everythin' through him." JJ nodded and he continued, almost to himself. "By the time this campus wakes up I want a handle on things."

0o0o0o0

Spencer Reid watched the faces of the young women of the dorm as they woke up and realised that one of their friends was never coming back. They were shaken, devastated; all casting furtive glances at the three FBI agents lurking at the front of the room with the slightly officious dorm monitor.

Their fear and grief was palpable and fresh. It was an uncomfortable thing to witness, even for three seasoned agents like JJ, Grace and himself.

The women all trooped in in their PJs and dressing gowns, mugs of tea in hand. It was a curious mix of fierce and vulnerable that struck him as familiar, though he wasn't sure why. As they settled down, their faces ranged from fearful to faintly mutinous.

Spencer didn't blame them. It was easy to feel helpless at a time like this – and to not understand why the police weren't doing more. Without a knowledge of the inner workings of an ongoing murder investigation, that kind of fear would quickly translate into anger. They were in for a rough time.

JJ started with what otherwise might be described as 'admin'.

He kept quiet, glad that this was her area and not his. Grace stayed quiet, too, during the formal announcement. Spencer wondered whether this mass of shell shocked faces was bothering her. It hadn't been that long since she'd been a student herself, being fast-tracked through her Masters degree, under secondment from the London Metropolitan Police.

"I spoke to Amy's parents," JJ was saying, gently. "Funeral services will be held on Sunday in Chicago. They're arriving later today to bring her home. They asked me to let you know that they would be staying down town, at the Mainline Hotel. If any of you would like to visit, or pay your respects, they'd like you to feel free to do so."

Spencer saw it coming before she even opened her mouth.

The angry brunette in the front row had the look of a woman who was channelling all her fear and grief into defiance, even if there was nothing, currently, to be defiant at. Luckily for her, they'd seen it all before; they knew not to take it personally.

"How did you let this happen?" she demanded. "What?" she asked, as her nearest neighbours exchanged wary glances. "Everybody is thinking it. You're the FBI, the campus is crawling with police and she get murdered waiting for the security shuttle."

"That's not helping, Katy," said the dorm monitor, giving her a warning look.

"Actually, it is," said Spencer, before the meeting could get out of control. "The fact that your friend was killed in such a well-lit area with a police presence indicates that the killer is most likely a part of this campus. He's not an outsider, he's someone who wouldn't raise alarm with police or potential victims."

"That gives him access to all of you," Grace added, being her usual matter-of-fact self. "You need to stick together. Don't go out on your own, especially after dark – and don't let your friends do it either. You're going to be least at risk when you're with a group of other women – and indoors. This guy has never attacked anyone anywhere that wasn't outdoors and exposed. I know this is horrible, ladies, but you're the people best placed to keep each other safe right now."

"You should also be aware that the three victims were brunettes," JJ told them.

Spencer watched as alternate waves of horror and relief rolled across different parts of the room.

"At this point we do consider it an intentional pattern."

The students drifted away to call their parents to tell them that they were okay – or not, as the case dictated. Two of them hung back, looking after one another. They were both brunettes and both devastated. One of them was the young woman who had spoken out during the meeting. The Dorm monitor marched back over. She meant well, Spencer thought, but she wasn't doing herself any favours.

"They're Amy's best friends," she told them, and looked as though she might have stayed through the interview (which he felt might not be all that helpful), if Grace hadn't helpfully detached her to ask for directions to the library for follow up interviews with the staff.

0o0o0o0

The administrative staff at the library were still in shock. The measures that they, the security staff and the police had put in place ought to have prevented another death. Now they felt helpless and responsible, which made getting information out of them a peculiar kind of difficult.

It wasn't that they didn't want to help – they wanted this guy to stop more than anything. It was just that they, like the rest of the campus, were all over the place this morning.

They felt that they'd failed her.

As far as anyone could tell, Amy Deckerman had been studying in the library until shortly before the curfew and had been with her usual small group of friends. She had packed up and gone to use the bathroom, apparently taking slightly too long to be able to catch the security shuttle. The driver swore blind that he hadn't seen her.

The evening shift at the library couldn't understand why she hadn't come back inside.

"Politeness," Grace had told them. The majority of the human race would make themselves less comfortable or less safe to avoid being seen to be rude or foolish, even with a serial killer nearby.

"We never think it's going to happen to us until it actually does," she'd explained, to soothe their incredulity. "Especially people who are your students' age. That stuff happens to other people, or only on TV."

"If only we'd gone out front," one of the librarians lamented.

"Then he would have moved on and found another victim," she'd assured him. "Don't feel bad about it – there's no way you could have known. Our choices are half chance."

The man looked at her, mournfully.

"It was just a thing that happened," Grace said, sadly. "If you start to blame yourself then you let the bad guy win."

She stepped outside and narrowed her eyes at the cordon across the road. Students were swarming around it now, hesitantly approaching the place where one of their own had died. Not sightseeing, just feeling, on some level, that they ought to be here. The shuffled around, feeling guiltily grateful that it hadn't been them.

The breeze caught Grace's hair and she frowned up at the clear blue sky, feeling that it was being inappropriately cheerful, given the circumstances. Without quite knowing why, she touched her father's pocket watch, tucked into the pocket of her jeans.

"I've got a bad feeling about this," she said, to no one in particular, and started down the steps.

0o0o0o0

"What's up?" Grace asked, dropping a coffee in front of Prentiss.

The amount of caffeine the team absorbed on a daily basis never failed to astonish her.

"_Coffee_," Prentiss said, with relief.

None of them had slept since the morning before they'd been called in; ordinarily she might have been tempted to put Emily's expression down to the grim case in front of them and a lack of sleep. Not today, however. Grace wasn't a profiler for nothing.

"You've been distracted since you left the coroner," she pointed out. "And you keep checking your phone. What gives?"

"I'm fine, really," Prentiss assured her; Grace gave her a look. "Really. I just want to get this guy."

Nodding slowly, Grace glanced at Gideon, who was closeted with Hotch by the incident boards. Emily followed her gaze and nodded too, understanding her colleague's concern.

"We're all over-tired," she said, watching their senior agents talking.

"Alright, grab a seat people, let's go!" Griffiths called, ushering his people into a rough semi-circle around the boards. "Anywhere."

Grace and Emily sloped over to the front and took up sentinel positions, recognising the start of a profile when they saw one.

Emily's phone went off and she cancelled the call with a frown, but not before Grace, a little way behind her friend, caught a glimpse of the caller ID.

_Well, well, well,_ she thought. _Prentiss is getting calls from Chief Strauss – calls that are pissing her off more than she's prepared to admit. Calls she isn't prepared to admit to getting. I wonder what she wants her to do…_

She watched her friend as she took off her jacket, mentally preparing herself for the profile. There was a lot of tension in her frame today – well concealed, just beneath the surface.

_I wonder what the woman has over Emily that makes her think she has her in a corner._

Grace took up residence against a desk at the end of the row, speculating that Strauss was going to be in for a bit of a shock if she tried to force Prentiss to do anything she didn't like.

0o0o0o0

Grace closed the door gently on the woman who might have been the latest victim if Emily and Garcia hadn't narrowed it down so quickly to Nathan Tubbs.

She had stopped shaking now and was in that weird, awkward phase of post-trauma shock, oscillating between calm, frank analysis, relief bordering on hysteria and occasional bouts of sobbing. The tears were becoming less frequent now and Grace could see that she was already beginning to recover. People bounced back from things so easily at her age.

The Dean of the College had turned up about half an hour before and had insisted, since the young woman's parents lived in Maine, that she would take her home and put her up herself. She had shot down everyone's objections, telling them all that this is what people had guest rooms _for_.

Grace had got the impression that the Dean was feeling especially protective right now. She couldn't tell if the student was more relieved or more embarrassed about this, but she was content, for now, to leave her in the Dean's capable hands.

She found Morgan looking through the evidence implicating Tubbs. It was all worryingly circumstantial at this point. She dropped into a chair across from him and had just picked up the torn up photograph of his wife and daughter when Reid and JJ appeared. Emily joined them from elsewhere in the station. Everyone was running on fumes now; it was what spree killers did to a team.

"You know I wouldn't mind some actual physical evidence," Morgan remarked, tiredly.

"Tell me about it," Grace agreed.

"Do we have anything?" JJ asked.

"The knife Tubbs had on him was inconclusive," Morgan told her. "The tazer didn't have any prints on it – which I guarantee means we're not gonna get a DNA match."

The agents let out a series of disgruntled sounds.

"I'll stop by the security office," Reid suggested, already walking. "If Tubbs kept any trophies linking himself to the crimes he might have kept them in his locker."

"I'll go with you," Prentiss offered, exhausted.

"Nah, let Reid do it," Morgan told her. He, like the others, could see how tired Emily was. "Go to the hotel, check in – they're not going to hold our rooms forever. We'll go in shifts."

Prentiss shook her head, wearily, "I'll sleep when he confesses."

"We all will," JJ seconded.

Grace watched them trail after Reid, reflecting that this would probably be their second night in a row without sleep.

"At least the jet will be quiet on the way home," she joked, half-heartedly.

Morgan's answering chuckle was half-hearted, too.

Grace rubbed her hands across her face, frustrated.

"Oh, I have a bad feeling about this," she said, and went to make herself a cup of tea; Morgan watched her go.

"You and me both," she heard him mutter.


	2. Faith

**Essential Listening: Black Clouds, Papa Roach**

**0o0**

He practically had his head pressed against the door.

"Hi," said Grace, brightly, a couple of feet behind him.

The man jumped and smacked his head on the door to the police-half of the interrogation room. He had 'lawyer' written all over him.

Detective Griffiths opened the door, surprised to be confronted with a grumpy and slightly bruised member of the local legal fraternity.

"Are you doing the right thing?" the lawyer asked, annoyed.

"We're holding him for seventy-two hours," Griffiths told him.

The lawyer, who looked very much like he wanted to say something else, shook his head and, throwing Grace a foul look, strode off.

"What was that about?" Hotch asked, cocking an inquisitive eyebrow.

"Caught him eavesdropping, make him jump, he banged his head on the door," Grace summarised, with a shrug.

Morgan chuckled and Hotch tried not to join in.

"That sneaky –" Griffiths began, but Gideon waved him down.

"He's doin' his job," he told him.

Grace took her turn to peer through the one-way glass at their suspect.

"What would you do?" Hotch asked, after a moment.

The first, unhelpful, thought that came to mind was quickly squashed, because while Gideon's interminable pacing was irritating the hell out of her, the man thought better while moving at speed. It was one of the reasons his office back at Quantico was such a mess.

She expelled air through her lips, making a rushing noise.

"Get shots of his victims, put them up on a board and put it in there with him, just outside his field of vision," she suggested. "Might kick off some of the remorse he felt after the fact. If he's our guy he won't be able to take his eyes off it – might loosen him up a bit." She put her head to one side, contemplatively. "Could put up the torn up picture of his wife and daughter there, too, but stuck back together. That ought to rattle him."

"That's good," said Gideon, pausing mid-stride to watch their caged bird.

"I'll go get a board set up," said Griffiths, departing.

"You done that before?" Morgan asked.

"Once," Grace admitted. "Took about thirty minutes to get a confession. He burst into tears."

"Like the Mary Frances case, Georgia, 1976," said Gideon.

"It's where I got the idea," she nodded. "As Douglas said, everybody's got a rock."

The four agents were silent for a few minutes, watching Tubbs sleep and trying to think of a way to persuade him to talk before the obligatory seventy-two hours was up.

"I got a text from JJ," said Grace, after a while.

"They find anythin' at the security office?" Morgan asked.

"Just porn and the clothes he was wearing before going on duty."

"That won't help us much," Morgan grumbled.

"She said the campus is lighting up like Blackpool Tower," said Grace. "Everybody's out tonight."

"Kids," Hotch remarked. "They bounce back."

0o0o0o0

The horror on their faces said it all – the students of Arizona College felt betrayed. They had put their trust in the police and the FBI, those near-mystical stalwarts of TV crime, and they had said they'd caught the bad guy. Now another young woman was dead and Grace could feel the panic rising around them; sporadic arguments were breaking out between students and officers on the perimeter. They were small incidents for the moment, but she knew it wouldn't be long before it began to spread and cascade into a real problem.

It was one of the reasons that only Hotch had stayed back at the station, largely to fend off Flagstaff's answer to Clarence Darrow. They'd need to work quickly here, or what was left of the situation would get badly out of hand.

The young woman on the ground was familiar, which meant that either she had been in the library when she was questioning people in the library the day before (which seemed like ever so much longer ago than that) or she was one of Amy Deckerman's dorm-mates. She didn't like to think of those girls going through another loss so soon.

She had been bludgeoned, which ruled out the original UnSub, and stabbed rather half-heartedly. That, the lack of tazer marks and the fact that she hadn't been posed spoke strongly to the existence of a copycat.

It was doubtful whether any of the students would see it that way.

She sighed and jogged up the small rise to the road that overlooked the small, ornamental copse to try to make a gap in the students large enough for the rather redundant ambulance to come through. She supposed it was as good a medium as any to get the poor woman out of there – and the paramedics were doing quite a good job of herding students, which was like herding cats, only less fun.

She'd just convinced their duty manager (via radio) to let them stick around for a bit in case anything kicked off when another female student charged past and straight over to JJ, who seemed to be trying to calm her down.

Suddenly, it clicked: Grace realised that the angry young woman and the deceased had been the two Spencer and JJ had been talking to the day before. They were probably best friends. She started towards them at about the same time as Reid did, from below. Neither got there quickly enough to prevent JJ getting spat on.

"Oy!" Grace shouted, almost an echo of Reid's "Hey!"

Figuring that he would take care of JJ if needed, Grace took off after the angry friend, intercepting her at the entrance to the dorms and piloting her into the nearest empty room.

The young woman, who Grace seemed to remember was called Katy, demanded if she was going to be arrested.

"Of course not," Grace snapped at her. "You just found out your best friend was brutally murdered. But that doesn't give you the right to spit in someone's face."

"She told us you 'had a guy in custody'," she yelled.

Grace could even hear the quotation marks.

"And so we do," she said, more calmly. "The way your friend died is different to the earlier three murders in several key ways – which tells us that this was someone else."

"Someone _else_?" Katy demanded – it had shocked him out of some of her rage, at least. "Who would want to kill Alyssa?"

"That's a very good question," said Grace. "Perhaps you could help find out," she added, and managed not to stagger when Katy burst into tears and collapsed against her shoulder.

0o0o0o0

The station, as might be expected, was not currently a good place to be an FBI agent. The general feeling seemed to be that the BAU were all mouth and no trousers, and had plumped for the wrong guy. Even Morgan was beginning to doubt the profile. The team was grumpy and a little bit desperate. Though they were working hard to keep it from their colleagues, behind closed doors the frustration was really beginning to show.

"I can't believe we're actually thinking about letting Tubbs go," JJ huffed, still feeling keenly responsible for Alyssa's death.

"Seconded," said Grace. "He spent all last night staring at the pictures of his victims. Someone who wasn't involved wouldn't have been able to look at them."

"We haven't got a shred of evidence," Morgan reminded them. "Tubbs' lawyer's not gonna let him talk so there's no way to get a confession out of him.

"Well, we could still hold him for another forty-eight hours," she insisted.

"You can't hold a suspect indefinitely with no evidence," Morgan returned.

"Not indefinitely," said JJ and Grace in perfect time.

"Forty-eight hours," JJ continued. "It's enough time to clear the campus."

"And prove to the local PD that this really is a copycat," Grace put in.

"Can we please forget about Tubbs for a minute?" Gideon interrupted, frustrated. "Let's just say we have a copycat. Who we talkin' about?"

There was a moment where everyone rearranged their minds to face the new problem.

"The most common examples are the ones people don't always think of as copycats," said Reid. "Kids who commit school shootings, also teen suicides – they tend to come in clusters."

"Anger bombers, too," Grace added. "Out for their five minutes of fame."

"All three models – we're talking about an age range that's consistent with the campus," said Prentiss.

"School shootings fit the classic copycat model," said Gideon. "They want their own piece of the glory. They're competing."

"Okay, but that doesn't jive with whoever wrote this note," Morgan pointed out. "'He's innocent.' That's about freein' Tubbs, not tryin' to steal any credit."

"So, could Tubbs have a partner?" JJ theorised.

"Oh yeah, sure, that's possible," Morgan allowed, "but I think it's highly unlikely. I mean, come on, look at Tubbs – he's a loner, he's anti-social. He's not the partner type."

"Could be more like a groupie," Reid suggested. "After Kenneth Bianchi was arrested, he actually convinced a woman he hardly knew to attempt a murder so the police would think the Hillside Strangler was at large."

"Oh, come on, he's hardly charismatic enough for that," Grace scoffed. "He couldn't talk his way out of a paper bag – and he knows it. That's why he clammed up so fast."

"And Tubbs subdues his victims first," Emily argued. "He's not powerful. Not to mention the stabbing most likely means he's impotent."

"Groupie doesn' have to know that," said Gideon. "All they have to believe is that Tubbs answers some need inside them. Whoever wrote this definitely needs somethin' from Nathan Tubbs," he continued, studying the letter. "'I'm still out here.'"

There was an uncomfortable pause; Grace was the one to break it, much to her own surprise.

"I've got a bad feeling about this," she muttered.

"Would you _stop_ sayin' that?" Morgan snapped.

Grace looked up, surprised, to find all her co-workers staring at her. She hadn't realised she'd spoken aloud.

"Sorry," she apologised, gruffly. "I've been awake too long. My brain-to-mouth filter has turned itself off."

0o0

"Hey, Grace?" Spencer asked, as the two of them glared at Nathan Tubb's departing back from inside the conference room.

"Mmm?"

"You know you have a bad feeling about this?"

"Yeah?"

"Is it a bad feeling like…" he lowered his voice, "like the bad feeling you had in Gideon's apartment, or –"

"No, just a common-or-garden-variety bad feeling."

"Oh," said Spencer, not sounding all that relieved. "Good."

Grace glanced at him. Neither of them had mentioned his rather abrupt introduction to the spirit world and Grace wasn't entirely sure he believed it had really happened.

"Why?" she asked. "Out of curiosity."

He grimaced as Tubbs was ushered out of the door.

"Because I've got a really bad feeling about this, too."

Grace nodded.

"And you want to – document this for scientific purposes?"

The question caught him for a moment, but then he gave her a tentative smile.

"Something like that."

Together they turned to the evidence table. Next time Nathan Tubbs was brought in, they _would_ have enough to charge him.

0o0o0o0

Spencer watched the falling blossom, feeling utterly wretched.

Although technically both the serial killer and his copycat had been permanently taken out of circulation, their deaths had been pointless and preventable. They had both managed to evade justice for their crimes. It didn't seem fair.

He glanced at the agent beside him, in case her 'super powers' (as he was currently choosing to classify them) stretched to hearing the uncomfortable thoughts in his head, which he was absolutely certain should not be said aloud.

Since Grace appeared to be staring down at the scene with the same sort of pensive expression on her face which he imagined was painted over his, he supposed that they didn't.

"She chose the location for her end-game well," she observed, darkly.

They had both watched the CCTV footage over Hotch's shoulder as the groupie had intercepted Tubbs and led him to this quiet corner of the campus.

"Limited access," Spencer observed, glancing over the wall. "Only one entry or exit point."

Which was why Morgan and Emily hadn't been able to get there in time.

"She wanted poetry at the end, I suppose," said Grace.

They moved out of the way to let the EMTs carry the young woman's remains past them.

"Katy told us she was a fan of Slyvia Plath," he said, sadly. A though occurred to him and his eyes flicked up to her face. "Can you…?" he nodded after the stretcher bearers.

She seemed to take his meaning.

"No," she said, following his gaze. "They don't always stay – and she wanted out of this world as fast as she could get. I think if she'd been stuck here after the fact it would have been a particularly cruel irony."

Spencer regarded her for a moment. He hadn't really talked to her abut the dead woman he'd seen fade into nothingness a few weeks previously.

He was, first and foremost, a man of science, and the sight of something so obviously otherworldly had rattled him. For the first time in his life, instead of bursting with curiosity about something new and unusual, he found himself uncertain that he really wanted to know anything else about what Grace could or couldn't do.

The mechanics of it frightened him.

Even the thought that there was something that _had_ mechanics frightened him.

The cold, sad eyes of Mary Breitkopf had stayed with him through several sleepless nights. It had prompted something of a cooling off period in his and Grace's friendship; he was no longer sure what to make of the woman.

For a moment, it looked like Grace was about to ask him something – her eyes had narrowed slightly and there was a hesitance about her that someone who didn't know her well would miss. He supposed that she was wondering whether he had believed a word she'd just said. Since he wasn't sure himself, Spencer was quite glad when her body language closed off and she turned away.

It occurred to him, while he was still being surprised that he knew her well enough now to recognise her tells, that she may not know if she could trust him anymore. A glance at her posture seemed to confirm it: Grace was tense, her arms folded, body closed off. Guarded.

He frowned. That hadn't been his intention. Despite her apparent inability to live within the normal bounds of physics and reason, he quite liked his odd friend's company. He'd missed her presence lately, sensing the growing distance between them.

"Plath would have approved," she said, interrupting his thoughts.

He followed the direction of her gaze to what had once been a pleasant, quiet courtyard, littered with white bunches of fallen blossoms, large and soft as feathers. Here and there, one or two would float down from the trees and fall into a pool of blood, the petals tingeing an urgent pink in the gore.

"It's like the trees are weeping."


	3. In Name and Blood

**Essential Listening: Make a Memory, Bon Jovi**

**0o0**

"Reid?"

Spencer woke to the sound of JJ's voice, which given how much time they all spent sleeping on the jet, wasn't all that confusing. Then he realised that he was a: sleeping in a chair; b: in Gideon's office; and c: it was morning. The world clicked back into focus.

JJ was standing just inside the door, looking bewildered.

"What are you doing in here?" she asked.

He made an effort to struggle slightly more upright and take his bearings. He checked his watch: 8 a.m. He hadn't shown up.

"Gideon didn't answer his phone," he said, by way of an explanation. "I called him twice."

"Have you been here all night?" JJ asked. She looked mildly concerned about his mental health.

Spencer pointed at the chess board and made an effort to look less like he'd slept in his boss's office before heading into the bullpen.

"We were supposed to play chess."

"Here?"

JJ didn't appear to believe him.

"Yeah, uh – yeah, he hasn't been back to his apartment since – um…" He met his friend's eyes and she nodded, understanding; she looked down and he pulled the strap of his messenger bag over his head. "Right."

"Well, I need to brief the team," she said, hefting the stack of files she was carrying. "So…"

_So, I need a coffee,_ he thought, getting to his feet. _And an excuse to make a run for breakfast._

"Is Hotch here?" he asked aloud.

"Uh – he's not due for another half hour," said JJ, as they walked out.

Spencer closed the office door behind them, his eyes resting for a moment on the undisturbed chess pieces. Frowning, he wondered why the sight of them should bother him so much.

0o0

He'd managed to freshen up in the gents before JJ was ready to present, grateful that Quantico was the kind of place where accidentally sleeping in the office happened to most people, most of the time. That and the coffee had made him feel approximately 75% human and he'd traipsed into the conference room without bothering to go to his desk. JJ was on the phone when he got there, so he'd gone straight for the case file and tried not to yawn too much.

Morgan strode in at 8.30 sharp, took one look at how empty the room was and left again in search of more coffee. By 8.40, Spencer was beginning to worry. They were still four people down – half the team, if you included Garcia. This wasn't like them.

"What, no Hotch, now no Gideon?" Morgan asked the room at large as he came back in.

"No, not yet," said JJ. Spencer could tell that she was getting frustrated.

"Man, those guys have been out for two weeks," said Morgan, dropping into a chair. "You'd think the least they could do is be on time."

"Yeah, 'cause you're never late," Spencer quipped, earning a sardonic smile from his two friends.

"So where's Prentiss?" Morgan asked.

"Her phone keeps going to voicemail," JJ shrugged, helplessly.

"Pearce?"

"Same."

"Well, this room keeps getting' smaller and smaller, doesn't it," Morgan remarked, exasperated.

"Should we wait fifteen minutes?" Spencer asked and then spotted Grace Pearce hurrying down the corridor towards the conference room. She looked pretty annoyed, which he was sure shouldn't make him want to smile, but it did anyway. "Oh, hey," he said, aloud.

JJ and Morgan looked up.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry," Grace apologised, cornering around the desk as some speed and almost falling into the seat next to him. "My stupid rental car broke and I had to wait for someone to come get it." She paused and put a box on the desk. "Which was not a great time to discover that my phone had no charge. I bought apologetic bagels."

Spencer grinned. Breakfast, it seemed, had worked itself out.

"Ooh, cream cheese," said JJ, distracted, and took one; Spencer followed suit. "You should be late more often."

"Thanks," he said, with real relish. He was hungrier than he would care to admit.

Grace smiled back at them and took one of the case files as Morgan helped himself to a couple of bagels.

"I guess you're forgiven."

Morgan gave her an easy smile and she laughed, looking marginally less flustered.

"Well, that's one," he continued, glancing at the door.

With the air of someone only just noticing something important, Grace looked around and poked Spencer in the ribs with her pencil.

"Where is everyone?"

"Uh –" he said, but JJ beat him to it, checking her watch.

"We can just brief them on the plane," she decided, and started the presentation. "Right now a police task force in Milwaukee needs our help."

Everyone turned towards the screen as the faces of four women appeared upon it.

"They've had four murders over the past three weeks," JJ went on, "and in addition, another woman has been missing the last two days. They've all been women in their thirties, all married with children."

Beside him, he heard Grace make a tutting sound.

"Any connection between these victims?" Morgan asked.

"Just that they've all been abducted from the area of Wauwatosa," JJ told him. "All from very public places, but there's no witnesses."

"So whoever's doing this is unobtrusive," Pearce mused. "And must have a compelling means of controlling these women in such a public arena, or one of them would have raised the alarm." She frowned. "Apart from their age and their family lives, the women look quite different," she observed.

"How are we certain it's the same killer?" Spencer asked.

"Well, for starters," JJ said, advancing the presentation. "All the bodies have been dumped in the city's third ward."

They took a moment to study the images of the four, forlorn dump sites.

_Refuse_, Spencer though. _Dumped at the side of the road like they were trash_.

"Then there's this," JJ clicked again and everybody grimaced.

Morgan sat forward to get a closer look.

"Is that what I think it is?" Spencer asked, after a moment.

"All the hearts have been cut from their bodies," JJ confirmed.

Morgan shut his eyes for a moment; across the table, Grace shook her head, appalled.

"Oh now, that's just uncalled for."

0o0

_George Washington said, "Let your heart feel for the affliction and distress of everyone."_

0o0

_This is going to be a long damn day, _Morgan reflected as he skirted other agents in the corridor. There were just too few of them right now, and if the rest of the team didn't materialise soon they would have to leave without them. It wouldn't do the case any favours.

To his enormous relief, he spotted Hotch stepping off the elevator.

"Man, am I glad to see you," he said, intercepting him just in front of the door to the bullpen.

Hotch's expression was as inscrutable as ever when he asked, "Where are you headed?"

"Milwaukee, looks like an ugly one," said Morgan. "Catch you up on the flight."

"I'm meeting with the section chief," said Hotch.

"Okay, so I'll wait," said Morgan. There was something evasive about Hotch this morning, he decided, and it was making him uneasy. "I'm just glad you're back. Trust me when I tell you things have been a little shaky around here."

Hotch's frown did nothing to encourage him and his next words hit Morgan right in the gut.

"Morgan, I'm requesting a transfer."

"Is that a joke?" Morgan asked, after a moment. You couldn't always tell with Aaron Hotchner.

"No, it's not a joke," said Hotch, looking away. "Strauss has suspended me once already, the writing's on the wall."

Morgan stared at his boss in disbelief.

"Hotch, we both know that suspension was bogus."

He ignored him, as Hotch always did when he didn't want to discuss something.

"You'll get a new unit chief."

"What if we don't want a new unit chief?" Morgan asked. He was more than a little alarmed. Although he knew they had a strong team at the BAU, the nature of what they dealt with on a daily basis had a tendency to send them all up the wall every once in a while. A solid, stable unit chief who knew their pasts and personalities was vital to the effective running to the team – and Hotch was damn good at it.

"Maybe the next one won't be such a drill sergeant," Hotch joked, a quirk of amusement about his lips.

Morgan shook his head, aghast.

"Look man," he said, urgently. "Are you a pain in my ass? Yes sir. But wantin' to hang out with you and needin' you to lead this team are two very different things."

He'd made an impression: he could tell from the way the expression in his friend's eyes had changed, but it wasn't enough.

Hotch shook his hand.

"It's been a privilege," he said, and pushed past him into the bustling bullpen.

Morgan watched him go, letting his go-bag drop numbly to the floor. He felt like his whole world had just been shaken. Foundations that he'd thought were solid suddenly seemed distinctly more wobbly.

0o0o0o0

The mood in the jet was grim.

News travelled fast in the BAU and already they'd been dealt two heavy blows this morning. Three, if you counted the fact that Section Chief Erin Strauss was on the jet with them. Four, with Gideon's absence. Nobody seemed to want to talk about that at all.

There had been a conscious effort to exclude the intruder when the team took their seats prior to take-off, one which she was either ignoring or simply hadn't noticed. There was an atmosphere about the agents, an air that suggested that the unexpected departure of at least two of their colleagues was all her fault. Given this, Grace wasn't wholly surprised that the woman had chosen to seat herself apart from the team. Perhaps it was her way of telling them that she was something different – as if they needed reminding.

_Or perhaps she's just taking time to collect her thoughts_, Grace told herself, watching the Chief out of the corner of her eye. _If I was going out in the field for the first time with a group of experienced agents who were already all quite pissed off with me, I'd need a moment, too._

She returned her attention to the case notes and made herself more comfortable on the side table overlooking her friends. Grace had chosen this seat for three reasons. It afforded a good view of the whole place, and while she was prepared to be generous to Strauss, she wanted her where she could see her. It also meant that the woman wouldn't have to perch on the table herself if she deigned to join them, which Grace knew from experience wasn't the easiest thing to do in a prim skirt.

Also, the little table could get quite cramped, particularly if you ended up opposite Morgan, who had a tendency to spread out, or anywhere near Reid, who seemed at times to be almost all leg. With her own annoyingly long legs added into the equation, a ride in the jet could become very uncomfortable after a while.

She wasn't the only one with half an eye on Erin Strauss.

"You know, from this angle, she almost looks human," said JJ.

The others smirked. It took a lot to irritate JJ, who was generally forgiving and level-headed, but when you did…

"Has anyone talked to Emily yet?" Reid asked, frowning.

JJ shrugged.

"She was gone before I heard the news."

"Now we're down two agents and Gideon's MIA," Morgan complained.

Grace nodded. Gideon's absence, for now, was the most troubling. At least they knew where the others were, if not the reasons they'd had to leave.

A look of intense frustration crossed Reid's face at about the same time as Strauss got to her feet.

"Has this Strauss ever been out of the off-" he stuttered to a halt as everyone made urgent shushing noises.

It was pretty obvious that Chief Strauss had heard him, given that she was about two feet away, but thankfully she didn't mention it. Reid went very pink and very quiet all at the same time.

"Correct me if I'm wrong," said Strauss. "But I believe it is protocol to brief everyone before we arrive at the crime scene?"

JJ gave her a welcoming smile, despite her intense dislike of the woman. Grace hid her own smile, pleased that their communications liaison was so good at her job.

"Yes ma'am," she nodded, and Strauss took the seat beside Reid and opposite Morgan, immediately putting her in the midst of the unintentional leg sandwich that Grace had managed to avoid earlier. "This UnSub is abducting women from very public places with no witnesses. He holds then forty-eight hours without a sexual assault – and then he dumps their bodies with their hearts carved out of their chests."

Grace watched as Morgan dropped the stack of gruesome autopsy photos in front of Strauss. Both of them recognised it as a challenge and Grace was impressed that the chief actually picked one up to study it more closely – though she did pale quite considerably.

"Since he seems to cut out the hearts as a means of execution, rather than post-offence behaviour," Grace observed, "he's going to need somewhere very private to do his thing. That much blood and that much noise – he's got to be somewhere secluded or soundproofed."

"There's an obvious dichotomy in the skill the UnSub exhibits in abducting these women and the fact that he cuts their hearts out so crudely," Reid remarked.

Morgan was still glaring at Strauss, who managed to tear her eyes away from the broken woman in the photograph she was holding long enough to meet his unflinching gaze.

"We're probably lookin' at someone in a psychotic break," he said. "Could be a butcher, might be a hunter. Somebody who's very comfortable bein' around blood, but – as you can see – he obviously doesn't have the skills of a surgeon."

"It's an act of pure rage," Grace observed, watching the two of them eyeballing one another.

Predictably, Strauss looked away first, wanting to move the profile forward.

"So," she said, crossing her arms. "Do we have a working theory?"

Groaning inwardly, Grace glanced at JJ. Surely she knew it didn't work like that?

Morgan gave a hollow chuckle and set down his file.

"Sure we do," he said, irritably. "Somebody really doesn't like women."

He got up and left the table, probably, Grace decided, so he wouldn't say what he really felt to his superior's face. She admired his restraint. It effectively shut down the conversation, leaving JJ and Reid to avoid one another's gaze and smile politely at Strauss.

Grace, whose current position gave her the advantage of being out of immediate eye-line, glanced after her friend and said: "So we need to be looking at recent triggers. Rejections, break-ups, loss of significant family members. Whatever it is," she went on, "he believes that it's all this woman's fault."

"Given that no obvious type is emerging beyond age and background," Reid nodded, gravely. "These women are probably not surrogates for a specific person – rather, his rage has extended to include _all_ women."

"What does that make them?" Strauss asked, looking at the photographs again.

"Victims of opportunity, perhaps," said JJ. "Maybe taken from somewhere he associates with the object of his rage."

"But public places?" Strauss asked again. "A shopping mall – a picnic area?"

"Normal women," sighed Grace. "Law abiding, family oriented, average women."

Chief Strauss frowned down at the file in front of her and Grace took the opportunity to meet Morgan's gaze.

He shook his head and flicked his eyes at the back of Strauss's head. Grace gave him the barest of shrugs and a slight quirk of the lips. They would have to put up with her for the time being, until one of them could figure out how to get Hotch and Emily to come back.

0o0o0o0

The stench of rubbish and dried blood was never a good combination straight off the jet and it was already obvious that Strauss was struggling. The trouble was, coming in to consult on a case like this meant that every eye at a crime scene would always be fixed on them. She was being careful only to look at the body when she thought no one was looking. A photograph was one thing, but a real, very dead mother of two was another.

"You the FBI?" a man who was obviously the lead detective strode over to them as they ducked under the tape.

Morgan took the lead, which was probably for the best.

"Derek Morgan, Spencer Reid, Jennifer Jareau, Grace Pearce…" he paused, obviously wondering how to introduce the last member of their diminished team. They had to put their differences aside here, give the locals some faith in the profile. "And Section Chief Strauss."

"Vic Wolinski, Milwaukee PD," he nodded.

"Uh – you worked the Jeffrey Dahmer case," said Reid, abruptly.

"Sixteen years ago."

"I've – uh – studied it."

"And you remember my name?" Wolinski asked, giving Reid that sidelong look that he got when people who didn't know him well saw him work.

"He remembers everything," JJ told him, with a hint of affection.

"It's what he does," said Morgan.

"What can you tell us?" Strauss asked.

"A local merchant – uh – noticed her a few hours ago," Wolinski told them. "But considering he didn't see her when he came to work – uh – we figure she was dumped there between 7.50 and 8.05. Same window as the others."

"On his way to work, maybe?" Grace wondered aloud. "All the bodies were found in this area, right?"

"Uh, Wauwatosa's an upper middle class suburb," Wolinski explained. "Approximately fifteen minutes from here. All the women were abducted from there in the afternoon and turned up here in the morning, two days later."

"All this foot traffic and no one saw anything," JJ observed sadly.

"Well, he – uh – wraps the bodies – uh – loosely so they're not immediately recognisable," said Detective Wolinski. "Eventually, the – uh – wrapping comes open."

They stood around the body, looking sadly down at the bloodied corpse. Her last moments must have been agony.

"My guess is he – uh – has a van or truck," Wolinski continued. "Something he can back up so he's shielded when he makes the drop."

Grace nodded. That made sense.

"Also a good vehicle to abduct someone in," she muttered.

"No prints on whatever he wraps them in?" Morgan asked, but Wolinski shook his head.

"There've been traces of paint and wood stain – uh – most of it's just common stuff you'd get in any hardware store."

"He's trying to demean them," Reid remarked. "Putting them out like trash."

"This guy might work or live around here," Morgan suggested, thinking aloud. "Gets off on the reaction to his…" he paused, looking back at the remains, "handiwork."

"What can you tell us about the victim?" JJ asked.

"She was taken from a supermarket," Wolinski said. "Her husband says that most days she woulda been picking up her son at school, but he was spending the afternoon at a friend's."

"This is your fifth victim, right?" Strauss asked.

The accusatory nature of her tone set off alarm bells all around the team. Grace shared a speaking look with JJ. This did not bode well.

"Yes," Wolinski admitted. Clearly, he hadn't missed the tone either.

"You should have called us sooner."

With her arms crossed and judicial air of admonition, Strauss strongly reminded Grace of the head teacher from her secondary school. She had the exact same expression Grace remembered from trying to explain why the desk in front (occupied by a girl who had been spreading rumours about Grace's love life) had suddenly collapsed in on itself, covering the young woman in question in ink. Although the head could have had no way of knowing that Grace had used magic to exact her revenge on Debbie, they had always assumed it was her fault.

At the time, this had struck her as mightily unfair, which was possibly why she'd taken such an active interest in forensics and evidence gathering in later life. The Sheriff had a similar look about him that she imagined had been on her teenage face in the head teacher's office.

"I thought we had a handle on it," said Wolinski, defensively.

"Apparently not."

Grace winced; Reid shifted from foot to foot, embarrassed.

"Uh, ma'am?" JJ interrupted. "Excuse me, sir."

She led Strauss away; the section chief looked like she might have a few words for her after that interruption.

"I'm sorry, that was outta line," Morgan apologised quietly, once the woman Grace was beginning to reclassify as a danger to the case was out of earshot.

"Morgan and I were coppers before we joined the BAU," Grace told him. "We get it."

The implication that not everyone _did_ get it was not lost on the detective. He shot a covert look at Strauss that was far from friendly.


	4. Under Siege

**Essential Listening – Get Over It, by OkGo**

**0o0**

The news of the sixth abduction came through as they got past the reception desk of the Wauwatosa Police Department; by the time they made it upstairs the team had gone into full profile mode. They were now so intent on the job at hand that they'd half forgotten that Strauss was there. When it came to this part of the job she was no help at all.

"What do we know?" Detective Wolinski asked, marching up to the officer waiting to brief them.

"Woman's name is Clara Thompson," he said. "Husband tried to reach her on her cell phone and when she didn't pick up he drove to the department store. Car was in the parking lot, but she's not inside."

"Is that the husband?" JJ asked.

Grace followed her gaze to the agitated man sitting at one of the officers' desks.

"Yeah."

"JJ," Morgan nodded in the husband's direction. "Take Strauss with you."

You could have bottled the look Strauss gave Morgan at what was a barefaced dismissal, but she opted not to argue, at least in front of the Milwaukee cops. JJ's warning must have sunk in.

"I had the department store uplink the security footage to your analyst at Quantico," the officer told them.

_Smart move_, thought Grace.

"Perfect," said Morgan.

"My desk is over here," Detective Wolinski told them.

Grace followed her fellow agents, hoping Strauss wasn't mucking up talking to the next of kin. Morgan called Garcia, the one sure-fire way to de-stress mid-case.

"Garcia, baby-girl, tell me something' I wanna hear."

Grace smirked, though she didn't hear the response. Morgan's shoulders relaxed slightly, so it must have been good.

"How 'bout somethin' I don't already know?"

There was a pause as Detective Wolinski stripped off his jacket and found another chair.

"Look, did you locate the missin' girl on the security footage?"

Detective Wolinski's screen suddenly opened a window all by itself, which generally meant that Garcia was working some remote magic. Sure enough, the feed from the security footage began to play. It was black and white and grainy, but enough to observe behaviour.

"Uh-huh," said Morgan and put Garcia on speaker, just in time for Strauss to reappear. JJ, too, joined the agents congregating around the computer.

"She doesn't seem to be on anyone's radar," Reid observed.

"On screen, at least," Grace qualified.

"Okay, who's the kid?" Morgan asked, as they watched a young lad approach their victim.

"Does Clara Thompson have a son?" Detective Wolinski asked.

"No," JJ frowned. "A two-year-old daughter."

"Looks like the kid's lost," said Reid.

"Garcia, this all you got?" Morgan asked.

"That's it," she confirmed. "And then they turn down a hallway with no security cameras and we lose 'em."

"That's an effective ruse," Grace remarked as Garcia wound back the video. "What parent wouldn't help a lost kid in a shopping centre – especially after Jamie Bulger."

"I'll get a list of missing kids," Detective Wolinski offered. "See if we can make out a resemblance to any of 'em."

"Oh damn," said Morgan, suddenly.

"What?" Reid asked, all eyes on Morgan.

"Somethin' Hotch said," he elaborated, and Grace saw Strauss's eyes narrow. He wasn't supposed to be a part of this case. "All the abductions and disposals were timed around school. He thought the UnSub might work in the system. What if this guy's actually usin' his own son to lure his victims?"

_And attaining a new level of skeezy_, Grace added, privately. _Fuck._

0o0

"Detective Wolinski told us you're tryin' to single out trucks and vans," said Morgan, to a whole room full of worried police officers, all eager for any help they could get.

He had taken the lead on the profile, too. Grace wondered if he even knew he was doing it.

"Smart. The UnSub is dumping his victims in the business districts, so I'd agree with you, he's probably not drivin' somethin' that stands out. He may even have some type of company logo on the side of his vehicle."

"We know he abducts the women in Wauwatosa and then dumps their bodies somewhere in the third ward," Reid explained, pointing out the area on the map of the city. "Uh – most UnSubs keep their area of control – where they kill their victims – triangulated between the two points."

"Which means the UnSub probably lives in Wauwatosa or the third ward," Morgan added. "Somewhere in that area. The people who live there know the UnSub."

"There's no sexual component to his crimes," said Reid. "Which means it's more about the UnSub making a point. He's cutting their hearts out."

He glanced at Morgan as the familiar shiver of disgust travelled around the room.

"It may be symbolic of a heartbreak, or maybe he has a thing for hearts," Grace picked up. "Either way, the way he kills these women – it's like he'd trying to get to the core of their beings. It's possible that someone has recently done the same to him. We can't rule it out at the moment."

"It might be just that this is the sickest way the UnSub can think of to demean the women and throw them out like trash," Morgan told them, heavily. "We can't really know."

"The two most important questions to ask ourselves are – uh – what is this guy doing with these women for forty-eight hours, and why is he willing to use his own son to abduct them?" Reid proposed.

"And if he is truly usin' his own son then it's likely that he has what we call 'borderline personality disorder'," Morgan explained. "Now, borderlines, they think that all relationships revolve entirely around them."

"This has a lot to do with rage," Grace continued. "He is the centre of his own universe and can't stand it when it doesn't revolve around him."

Reid nodded.

"And when they set their minds to somethin'?" Morgan suggested. "Absolute. There is no grey area."

"And it would also manifest that would be visible to people around the UnSub," Reid agreed. "Tense bouts of anger, depression, problems with drinking. Uh – he would also be highly sensitive to rejection."

"This is likely what set him off in the first place," Grace interjected. "So look out for breakdowns in significant relationships."

"And one last thing," said Morgan, finally. "It is not easy to crack clean through breast bone. You're dealin' with a guy who works with his hands, who's used to hard labour. At the very least, he's not afraid to get dirty."

0o0o0o0

If she'd thought that making a decision and moving forward would make her feel better, she had been wrong. She'd fled Quantico before anyone could ask her why she was leaving – she didn't want to lie to her friends and shame was proving to be a powerful motivator. In the past four hours, Emily had cleaned her apartment from top to bottom, made enough Massaman curry to last a month's worth of frozen dinners and started prepping her language skills for the foreign service exam.

After about three years, the sporadic phone calls from her former colleagues had stopped coming in. She imagined that meant they'd landed wherever the case had taken them. Suppressing the urge to just take off and join them had been harder than she'd thought.

Instead, she'd been toying with the idea of either going out to enjoy her reluctantly-found freedom, or staying in and having a long, hot bath and not thinking about anything at all, when someone knocked on her door.

She groaned when she looked through the peephole. Aaron Hotchner was possibly the last person she wanted to speak to right now, after her parents (who had never really understood her desire to join the FBI in the first place) and Erin Strauss.

Emily let him in with an air of resignation. After her performance in his office this morning he had either come to ask her to stay or to yell at her for compromising her position. Either conversation would probably push her over the edge right now, and she didn't feel like breaking down in front of someone she would otherwise consider a friend.

Hotch's expression (which Garcia had been known to refer to as 'resting Hotch-face') did not bode well for her sanity.

"Can I come in?"

Emily nodded and then followed him into her apartment, briefly wondering how much of it Hotch was currently profiling. She turned the music she'd been listening to off.

"The team needs us," he said, which she'd expected. "They're working a case in Milwaukee. Gideon hasn't shown up and don't tell me 'you quit', or 'I put in for a transfer'."

_That_ was unexpected.

"You put in for a transfer?" she asked, surprised.

"They're both still hung up in the system," he said, which she supposed meant 'yes'. "So technically we're in dereliction of duty by not being there."

"I'm sorry, I can't go," Emily told him, shaking her head. Hotch's expression was unreadable.

"Right," he said. "Sorry I barged in."

He turned to go and Emily found herself trying to stop him. It wasn't supposed to be that easy. Hotch was definitely up to something – or annoyed with her.

It was often hard to tell.

"Wait, wait," she said, uncertain that she wanted to continue. "Can I ask you a question?"

Hotch changed course and prowled into her little kitchen area. It was tremendously odd seeing him there, looking the same as he always did at work. It was as if someone had cut him out of Quantico and transposed him there.

"Why are you really here?"

"I told you," he said. Her expression must had shown some of her disbelief as he continued, "I think Strauss came to you and asked for dirt on me."

Internally, Emily's stomach twisted uncomfortably. It rankled even now, when she'd all but admitted it.

"Why would she do that?" she asked, some of her frustration seeping into her voice.

"I think if you have your eyes on top leadership at the FBI, you wanna know who might stand in your way."

He'd said it almost gently, but she couldn't tell if she was referring to her or to Strauss.

"And what could I have told her?" she asked, stepping forward, challenging him.

"That one of my agent might have murdered a suspect in cold blood," he said, which surprised her. She'd had her suspicions about her predecessor, but the team could be very insular at times; they never spoke ill of the people they'd lost. "Or another had a serious drug problem that I didn't report."

She almost blurted out then and there that she wouldn't have told anyone about Reid (though she had come close when it had begun to impinge on their cases) but Hotch's next words stopped her.

"And if Strauss had any evidence, my career would be over. I think she put you on our team and expected something in return and – to your credit," he said, "you quit rather than whisper in her ear."

Emily looked away for a moment. Although it was a relief to know that he didn't believe she'd betrayed them, it still didn't change anything.

"I told you," she said, sadly. "I hate politics."

"Come to Milwaukee," said Hotch. She was already shaking her head when he went on, "I'll make you a deal. If your ready bag isn't here, packed, I won't bug you any more. If it is I want you on that plane with me. One more case."

Emily huffed. He had her and she knew it. It was the one thing she hadn't been able to tidy or unpack yet, and subconsciously she had been putting it off in case there was a call. Hotch was a smart man. He always seemed to know when to gamble.

"I already turned in my badge and my gun."

It was a last-ditch attempt and they both knew it.

There was the hint of a smile about his mouth, when he said, "That's just hardware."

0o0o0o0

They weren't getting anywhere and all of them knew it. There was only so much they could do being so short-handed, and the fear was growing that it simply wouldn't be enough. Spencer had pushed his worries about Gideon to the back of his mind, but he could still feel it there, slowing maturing into a real fear. What if something had happened? What if he needed them?

"What would you do with five women's hearts?" he murmured to Grace, who was doing her glaring-at-the-map-in-case-it-volunteered-anything-new routine.

She blinked and looked up at him; the slight pause before she answered made wonder what she was choosing not to say.

"You mean, is there an occult angle?" she asked, carefully.

"You're the expert," he shrugged, fiddling with his watch.

"I thought you were the expert at everything," she remarked, with a sardonic smile.

Grace looked as if she knew he was looking for an excuse for conversation, trying to distract himself from the pressures of the case and Gideon's absence. She could probably feel his frustration, he decided. He could feel hers.

"I hate the waiting," she said, simply. Spencer privately agreed. He gave her a small nod and she continued, "In terms of ritual use you have the standard paraphilias and all the people who want the power of someone's soul – though they're just as likely to take a head than a heart. People can make a ritual out of anything," she said. "But if it was a part of this I'd expect it to be written all over the bodies. Perhaps literally."

"The accoutrements of the arcane," he mused.

Grace made a noise which sounded like agreement.

"Dribbling candles at the very least," she nodded; he couldn't prevent the corners of his mouth from twitching upward.

Grace had a way of seeing the potential humour in almost any situation. She called it 'gallows humour'. Spencer wasn't sure what to call it, only that it was part of why talking to her always made him feel more centred – like things were more manageable somehow. It was as if laughter took power from the darker things in the world. It was something Garcia seemed to understand, too.

"I wish we knew what he was doing with the hearts," she mused, tapping the edge of the picture of the second victim's body. "I mean, if he's keeping them as trophies he'll be a lot less obviously nuts than if he's – I don't know – pounding stakes through them and hanging them on his wall, or something."

Spencer raised his eyebrows.

"Precedent?" he asked.

"Crown vs. Elton, 1998, Croydon," she said, without thinking.

There was a moment – almost a beautiful moment – where the realisation she had spoken aloud crossed Grace's face. It was replaced almost immediately by the carefully blank look she used when she was up to something. It really shouldn't have surprised him. He made a mental note to look up the case when he got the chance, in case this was more of the same kind of occult that Grace didn't like to talk about and still occasionally gave him nightmares.

Apparently embarrassed, Grace migrated back to the main table and started flicking though the case file. He got the distinct impression that she was trying not to look like she was avoiding his gaze.

Spencer decided to give her some space, given that pressing her only made her clam up. Slowly, he was learning how to unpick his friend's mind, and it still surprised him when he found a new avenue that he hadn't anticipated.

Most days, he found himself wondering just what it was that her old unit in London had specialised in.

He joined Morgan and Detective Wolinski by the map, where they were discussing the latest measures put in place to catch the man the papers were already referring to as the 'Lonely Heart Killer'.

"I've tripled patrols in the area and I've got every available unit re-canvassing," said Detective Wolinski wearily. Morgan hadn't missed the tone.

"It's tough knowin' they're out there and we're still a step behind," he empathised.

"You know, it used to be a runnin' joke that if you told people you were from Milwaukee, all they wanted to talk about was _Happy Days_ reruns," Detective Wolinski lamented as they sat down. "The Dahmer happened and they ask you about it as if it's the same thing. As if it's entertainment." He shook his head bitterly. "But I was in that apartment."

"Gideon, one of our bosses, says that there are things that attach to you that you can never wash off," Spencer said, hoping that it would help Detective Wolinski as much as it had him.

He glanced up at Grace, who was standing just behind his chair. She wasn't watching Detective Wolinski, but Chief Strauss. Spencer followed her gaze; their section chief was staring at him as if his words had struck a chord. She looked away abruptly.

"Alright," said JJ, breaking the mood. "Is it possible we're looking at this the wrong way?" she postulated.

"What do you mean?" asked Strauss.

"Well, we're trying to zero in on the UnSub," JJ explained. "Now – you guys tell me – but if he really is using his son, wouldn't the trauma manifest more clearly on the boy?"

"You are not wrong," Grace remarked, as everyone did the equivalent of sitting up and thinking this new perspective through.

"Can your analyst get a list of all the children in the area that we're targeting?" Strauss asked.

"Garcia can get you whatever you want," said Morgan.

Spencer watched as Strauss dialled Garcia's number.

"Talk dirty to me," Penelope Garcia said, through the speaker.

Spencer froze and looked at the table, suddenly very glad that Grace was behind him and he couldn't currently see her face. Morgan's expression was bad enough (coupled with his gruff sounds of dismay). His friend's legs, which were just inside his peripheral view, appeared to be shaking very slightly. Spencer compressed his lips, aware that he was in danger of losing it completely, which wouldn't help Garcia, or be a terribly good idea in front of their section chief right now.

"This is Section Chief Erin Strauss," said Strauss, and Grace carefully lowered herself into a chair between Morgan and Spencer. He decided, based on her over-bright eyes, that she, too, was imagining what must be an impressive deer-in-headlights look on Garcia's face right now.

"Ma'am," said Garcia, tightly. "I think it goes without saying that I was expecting somebody else."

JJ pressed her fingers to her mouth as Morgan rubbed the back of his head, despairing of his colourful friend. Beside him, Grace made a faint snorting sound.

"I need a list of every grade school in the third ward and Wauwatosa," said Strauss.

Spencer risked a glance at JJ, who also appeared to be having a hard time keeping it together. Across the table, Detective Wolinski was hiding a small smile, watching the team's expressions with an air of amusement; he looked a little more relaxed than before. Garcia had that effect on people.

"Yes ma'am," said Garcia, unusually obedient and mightily embarrassed. "The third ward has one public grade school, but there appears to be four private schools that draw from that area."

"And Wauwatosa?"

"That would be nine, ma'am."

"And how many students?"

"Thirty-two thousand."

Spencer frowned. Even accounting for 52% of them being female, that still left nearly sixteen thousand children to filter through. He glanced around the table. Even including Strauss there were only six people at this table – and school performance wasn't something Garcia could access.

"Can you also get me a list of every guidance counsellor that deals directly with the student body in that area?" Strauss continued.

"Certainly, ma'am, said Garcia, still in that bright, slightly frightened voice. "And again, I'd like to ap-"

Strauss cut her off, clearly feeling that time was a-wasting.

"You need to present these counsellors with the profile of a troubled kid."

The chief got up and left the table; they stared after her for a moment.

"Oh man," said Morgan, as Grace collapsed on the desk, her shoulders shaking with laughter. Even Detective Wolinski smiled.

"I better call Penelope and calm her down," said JJ, chuckling.

"Make it quick though, yeah?" said Morgan.

Spencer prodded the shaking mass of hair that was his fellow agent.

"Is she coming back?"

"Not yet," said Morgan, as JJ left the room.

"Then I'm not coming out."

"Is she always like that? Your technical analyst?" Detective Wolinski asked.

"Oh yeah," Morgan chuckled.

Grace emerged from her hair and wiped tears of genuine mirth from her face. Just the sight of it made Spencer feel more solid.

"She makes our worst days easier to bear," she said, attempting to look more like a professional FBI agent.

"I wish we had one of her," said Detective Wolinski, ruefully; he and Morgan migrated back to the map.

Spencer leaned over to Grace, who was still shaking her head at the conference phone.

"I thought you were going to burst," he said quietly, and she grinned.

"There was a minute there when I thought I might crack a rib," she admitted, winking at him.

She pulled out her phone to text Garcia and Spencer suddenly became aware of how near he still was to her. He blushed and pulled away, wondering why it felt so normal to be close enough to her to feel the warmth of her skin.

"What are you," he cleared his thought, suddenly uncomfortable. "What are you doing?" he asked.

"Telling Garcia never to change," she said, affably, before her expression altered. She turned to look at the map over her shoulder. "Hey Morgan? You know I appreciate your highly sculpted behind as much as Garcia does, but could you move it just a smidgeon to the left?"

Detective Wolinski snorted and Morgan chuckled, raising an eyebrow.

"I didn't know you felt that way, Pearce," he grinned, flirting effortlessly.

Spencer rolled his eyes.

"What're you thinking?" he asked, frowning at the map.

"Well, the UnSub is timing things based on schools, right?" she said. "So we should focus on the schools closest to his comfort zone."

"You think he'd – uh – dump 'em so close to home?" Detective Wolinski asked.

"He doesn't give a damn about these women," said Grace, all trace of amusement gone. "He doesn't take forensic countermeasures… he's probably just hoiking them out the back of his van somewhere along the most convenient routes from A to B."

"And we know one of those points is the school," said Morgan, nodding. He flicked open his phone as JJ came back in. "Hey momma – naw – Garcia – Gar- _Penelope!_ Calm down and work your magic for me babygirl."

There was a brief pause where Spencer imagined their friend taking a deep breath and settling back behind the keyboard.

"Okay, I need you to limit the search to schools between these co-ordinates."

0o0o0o0

Grace stared glumly at the Styrofoam cup of hot boiled water in front of her. It seemed that the Milwaukee Police Department had never heard of a beverage other than coffee, and the lack of caffeine was making her feel crabby and stupid.

They'd split into teams to canvass the school counsellors and Grace had somehow ended up partnered with Strauss. She suspected that this was because Morgan thought she was the least likely to say something stupid and get them in trouble (except for JJ, who had been chief-sitting all morning).

Grace chose to put this down to superior acting skills rather than a lack of inter-team profiling. They were yet to see her at her worst, after all.

It felt like they were juggling the babysitting of a demanding toddler and while Strauss hadn't actually said anything stupid to the counsellors, Grace was extremely tired of being polite.

"You don't like me very much, do you Agent Pearce?" said Strauss. Grace hadn't even realised she was there. They were the first team back and were expecting the others any minute.

Grace assessed her for a moment.

"Not especially, ma'am," she said, truthfully.

The chief raised her eyebrows. She might have expected mild hostility, but not open admission.

"You don't have any ambition outside the BAU?" she asked, rather pointedly.

Grace ignored the bait.

"No ma'am. I learned about ambition the hard way."

"That's very forthright of you," Strauss remarked, though it seemed to Grace that her heart wasn't entirely in it.

Grace smiled.

"My old governor always said I had a mouth on me," she remarked. "But to be fair, ma'am, you asked."

"I'm just trying to protect the Bureau," she said, sternly.

"I know," said Grace, lightly. "And I know you have what you think are our best interests in mind." Chief Struass gave her the exasperated parent look and Grace continued, "The problem is, ma'am, this is the first time you've actually worked with any of us, so you don't really know what our best interests are."

"You are dangerously close to earning yourself a censure," Strauss warned her.

"You won't censure me," Grace informed her. "Just like you won't censure Garcia for the way she talks to us, or Reid for his slip on the jet."

"Oh, and why is that?"

The woman's expression was almost comical – it looked like something had just tried to climb inside her nose. Grace wondered whether anyone had ever stood up to her before.

"Because you're beginning to understand how we function, and how hard it is to keep coming back to this every day. And you feel guilty."

"Enlighten me, Agent Pearce," she said, sourly.

"Not about Hotch," said Grace. "There's stuff going on there that I don't understand, but you put pressure on Emily and now she's quit. You know she's good at her job and you didn't intend for her to leave the Bureau. Now you're regretting trying to get her to…" Grace trailed off, considering. "I don't know, snitch on Hotch, probably. She wouldn't, because she's a good agent and she knows that Aaron Hotchner is one of the best unit chiefs we're ever going to get." She smiled again. "And the fact that you didn't interrupt me means that you know it as well as I do."

Strauss looked away.

"If Agent Prentiss has made a formal accusation –"

"She didn't need to," Grace interrupted. "We may have an unspoken agreement not to profile our colleagues, but we can't actually turn it off. I saw her phone and I saw her expression."

"There was a pause in which Grace wondered whether the Canadian government would hire an ex-British cop/ FBI agent.

_Or somewhere in the old commonwealth, _she thought._ Somewhere warm._

"And what do you suggest I do?" Strauss asked.

There was challenge in her eyes, but Grace didn't especially care. Someone needed to say it and she was under no illusion that she was the most expendable member of the team.

"Back off," she answered, calmly. "Let us do the job we're bloody good at, where our skills and experience can make the most difference."

Chief Strauss shook her head slightly, possibly surprised that Grace had had the gall to speak her mind.

"And do the job that your skills and experience have made _you_ bloody good at," she continued. "Which is making sure that we can do ours."

The look of challenge wavered slightly and became one of appraisal.

"Is there any particular reason I'm being treated to your – uh – advice, Agent Pearce?" the woman asked, after a moment.

Grace smiled slightly. This was possible progress.

"You didn't throw up at the crime scene. You picked the autopsy pictures up when you didn't want to and you're beginning to listen to us." Grace picked up her cup of disappointment. "You genuinely care about these women –" she smirked "– and you had to leave the room after Garcia's call so no one could see you laughing."

"I could fire you."

Grace shrugged.

"So fire me," she said. "I won't be that much of a loss. Hotch and Emily will be. Now, if you'll excuse me ma'am, we have a troubled schoolboy to find."

She walked away, hoping that her gamble would pay off. She'd just begun to feel settled in Washington, and she didn't particularly want to leave her new friends, but you didn't always get what you wanted.

JJ and Reid were already at the table, a distressing number of files in front of them.

"Are you okay?" JJ asked, as Grace shut the door rather briskly behind her.

"Ask me when we've got him," she said, and put her hot water down next to Reid.

"Alright, the boy doesn't look like he can be any older than seven," said Morgan, bringing a fresh stack of files to the desk. "Let's work youngest to oldest, start with the worst behaviour, get the names of the parents, send them over to Garcia. She can cross-check for criminal records."

Grace smiled at him. He didn't even know he was doing it, unconsciously filling the gap in the management structure of the team. He's make a good unit chief one day.

"This guy's dumpin' bodies between 7.30 and 8.00," he continued. "That gives us a little over twelve hours to make somethin' hit. Let's get it done."

"Look who's here!" Reid exclaimed; they followed his gaze to find Prentiss and Hotch walk through the other door.

"Hey," said Emily. "Where do we start? Oh –"

Grace couldn't help it; she gave her friend a one-armed hug.

"We could do with the cavalry riding in about now," she said, with a grin. "Did you bring them, too?"

Emily grinned back. Behind her, an astonished Derek Morgan shook hands with Hotch, looking distinctly relieved.

"How fast can you get us up to speed?" Emily asked.

"How fast can you sit down?" JJ said, beaming.

They divided up the files, feeling happier and more energised. There was a moment of stark tension as Strauss came into the room; Grace glanced between her and Hotch, who had a strange defiance about him right now. She shook her head – she had said her piece; it was up to providence now.

She scanned through the first' boy's information, ignoring the battle of wills going on above her head. It was a sad stack of facts and figures that added up to a father that drank and a mother that cared more about cashing the kid's welfare cheques than clothing and feeding them. Sighing, she closed the file and moved onto the next one.

Still, no one was speaking.

Emily broke the silence, her own defiance kicking in.

"We're only here to help."

Grace picked up a third file. Adoptive parents; possible abuse in previous care. She frowned and pulled a post-it out of her bag – at least they could use the opportunity to flag a few things up with child services.

"We'll deal with this later," said Strauss, as Grace's next file hit the table.

She looked at her pocket watch and 'hmmed' to herself.

"School's out, guys," she reminded them, pulling them all back into the search.


	5. Broken

**Essential listening – Broken, by Lifehouse**

**0o0**

They had trawled all night through some of the saddest files of the Wisconsin school system, and it felt like they were running out of time. There was only an hour, now, until the UnSub's usual 'drop off' time and there were still several hundred files to go. All of these boys had horrible pasts (and some of them presents), and none of their families fit the UnSub's profile. They could've opened a new department just to do this job every six months and it still wouldn't have helped all these kids.

Grace ran a hand through her hair, frustrated.

"It's impossible, there's too many," Reid complained, unusually petulant.

"Keep lookin' Reid," said Morgan, without looking up. "We still have an hour."

"Never thought we'd find a paper trail you didn't like," Grace muttered.

Reid grunted.

"Thank you, by the way, for giving Garcia that file to give to me," said Hotch, in an undertone to JJ.

"I don't know what you're talking about," said JJ, confused. "I didn't see Garcia before I left."

Emily smirked at Grace; Garcia could be pretty devious when she wanted to be – it took people by surprise.

They stuck at it, conscious that every file they chewed through brought them one step closer to Clara Thompson and her abductor.

0o0o0o0

It was never easy when it ended like this.

Aaron followed their section chief to the gutter containing Clara Thompson's mortal remains, surprised that she had been the first out of the SUVs. He'd thought at first it was all a part of showing them who was boss, but he saw her face when she got closer and understood.

This was the first victim Erin Strauss hadn't been able to save.

He steadied her when she stumbled against the fence.

"Are you alright?" he said softly. "You're okay."

She looked strained and distraught, caught out by the visceral reality of death. This would be the first major stain that she would carry home on her soul.

"I stepped – I stepped on her hair," she choked, looking as if she felt dreadfully exposed. That was the trouble with a scene like this. Everyone was watching you.

"If you need a second, take a second," said Aaron. "This is what it is. Just don't let the public see you break down."

He helped her get the first few steps out of the gutter, where Pearce pulled her up the rest of the way. The young agent led Strauss away, already offering her a bottle of water in case she needed to rinse her mouth out.

"This is a different area from the other dump sites, isn't it?" Prentiss asked.

"He's getting smarter," Reid observed. "He knows where all of our manpower is, so he's just changing locations."

"He's not done yet," said JJ.

"Well, how long before he changes when and where he abducts them?" Morgan said.

"He does that, we're back at zero," Prentiss remarked.

A shout from beyond the tape made them all look up.

"Clara?"

A man was approaching the scene at some speed, greatly distressed. Aaron recognised the husband of a victim when he saw one.

"No, no, no, no, we gotta keep him outta here," said Morgan, and took off toward the tape, Prentiss and JJ close behind.

Aaron let them go, glad that his team had been able to function without him, as anxious as they were.

"Morgan says you're worried about Gideon," he said, as Reid bent to take a closer look at their latest victim.

He glanced up, looking for hope Aaron wasn't sure he could provide.

"I keep on calling him, he doesn't call back," said the young agent.

Hotch nodded. Gideon's continued absence wasn't a good sign. He'd been shaky enough as it was before the suspension – well, shaky for Gideon.

"He's probably at his cabin. That's where he goes when he," he paused. "Needs to get away." Aaron gazed sadly at what was left of Clara Thompson. "Reid, I need your head in this," he said, aware of what he was asking.

"I know."

0o0o0o0

"So, what's around the dump site?" Hotch asked.

Detective Wolinski pointed them out on the map,

"Here's the old printing press at Quantagraphics, and the paving yard – and then the concrete factory where we found the body," he said. "None of them visible from the highway."

"You don't end up there by accident," Prentiss mused.

"Suggesting prior knowledge," Pearce observed from somewhere behind him.

"So we go back to the schools, we eliminate the third ward and we target problem kids whose fathers have held blue collar jobs over the last ten years," Hotch instructed.

_Damn it was good to have some real leadership again,_ Derek reflected.

"What if he's not a problem kid?" Reid postulated, suddenly.

"What?" said Derek.

"Forget it," the young agent said. "It's off the textbook profile."

"What is it, Reid?" Hotch asked, inviting him to continue.

"Sometimes when a parent is unstable – especially when the other one's out of the picture," he began, and Derek wondered if he was recalling his own upbringing. "You'll do anything to be the perfect child."

"Like help your father abduct women?" Prentiss asked, shocked.

"If it makes him happy," said Pearce, who appeared to be giving Reid a searching look. He avoided her gaze. "Makes about as much sense as anything when you're seven."

"They're never late for school," Reid pointed out. "Even with the abductions, the disposals of the bodies – it's always timed perfectly so the kid'll be on time to school." He was starting to sound excited now. "I don't think the killer would care – I think the _kid_ would."

0o0o0o0

"What kind of person finds out their partner has cancer and just skips out on them?" Grace grumbled, crouching behind the Smith house with JJ and Reid.

"Cancer's a scary thing," said JJ. "Maybe she just couldn't face it."

She and Reid were struggling into their stab vests; Reid gave JJ an odd look.

"Leaving a kid, though, just because life gets hard?" Grace asked.

"I can't imagine it," JJ admitted.

How long had Emily been inside now? Two minutes? Three?

"Her son will never forgive her," said Reid; there was just enough of a hint of darkness about the way he said it for JJ and Grace to share a speaking look behind his head.

"The door's locked," said JJ, after a moment. "I'm not technically allowed to –"

Hotch gave the signal and Grace kicked the door off its frame; the three agents strafed through the kitchen of what had obviously been a happy, well-maintained home. They followed the sounds of the other half of their team down to the basement, where a sort of queue of agents was forming.

It had all gone rather quiet beyond, as they dealt with whatever the UnSub had waiting for them down there.

Grace got inside in time to see Emily stumble backwards, her head bleeding and bruised. Morgan had a hand on Smith already, but Hotch – her blood ran cold. Hotch was facing down Smith's seven year old son, who was pointing a gun at him.

It looked very large in the child's hands, almost like a toy. There was a moment in which the world seemed to coalesce, but the UnSub, who must still have felt something for his son, told him to put it down. Hotch lifted it out of his unresisting fingers as she and Reid untied the school nurse. She sobbed and cried against her when they managed to get her hands loose.

Behind her, Grace could hear JJ taking care of Emily, who sounded woozy and unfocussed.

"You're dying," said Detective Wolinski, who was checking Smith's cuffs. "And this is what you wanna leave your son?"

Smith gazed at the hearts in their perfectly crafted wooden boxes before the detective bundled him out of the basement and away. As if by some unspoken signal, she and Reid kept his latest victim back until he was gone, blocking her view of the grisly souvenirs of her predecessors while they untied her hands and could escort her out without the UnSub causing further trauma.

They got her into the first ambulance, which sped off in the direction of the nearest hospital, getting her away from there as fast as possible. Emily was led, unresisting to the other one.

Grace had stationed herself by David, who seemed disturbingly resigned to the mess his father had made of their lives. He'd told her that he knew his daddy was killing the women, but he didn't listen when he told him not to – he'd just get angry instead.

Grace had told him he was very brave.

If she had to, she would stand by this car until child services arrived. She watched Detective Wolinski lead Smith to the car that would whisk him away to processing.

"I'll be dead before I ever stand trial," he gloated.

"Good," said Detective Wolinski.

"You know," he said, as they passed the car. "I never even told the boy to bring me this last one."

Grace closed her eyes.

_Always striving to be the perfect kid._

She looked up again as Strauss came back out of the house.

"How's she doing?" she asked Hotch, nodding in Emily's direction.

"She'll be okay."

"You know I can't officially approve of how this transpired, but…" she said, leaving what was probably an attempt at apology hanging in the air.

"I know," said Hotch. "The arrest was clean." He looked right at her when he continued, "It would be a mistake to break up this team."

Strauss looked around, aware that they could all hear – and were hanging on her and Hotch's every word.

"None of you will ever move up the chain of command," she said. "You know that."

"Why would I ever wanna leave the BAU?" Hotch asked, and walked away.

The smallest of smiles passed across Grace's lips; Strauss met her gaze and she turned away, content to let the others reassure themselves. In many ways Grace was still an outsider on this team.

"Hotch, you mean that?" Morgan asked, some way behind her. "You're not gonna leave us?"

"I don't know," he said. "I gotta talk to Haley."

"Hey," said Grace, crouching beside the little boy in the car. "If you ever need help, wherever you are, you call me, okay?" she said, offering him her card. "Any time."

"Okay," he said, and took it, holding it almost reverently.

"You're going to be okay, kiddo," she said, and ruffled his hair, eliciting the first smile she'd seen on him.

Hotch patted her on her shoulder, taking her by surprise. She got to her feet, conscious that David was watching them.

"Good work," he said.

"It's good to have you back," she said, surprised, but he was already walking away.

"My dad does that too," said David, correctly interpreting Hotch's relationship with the team.

"Yeah," she nodded, with a half-smile. "They all do."

0o0o0o0

It was close to 10 p.m. when Spencer finally arrived at Gideon's cabin. He hoped it wasn't too late to be visiting his friend and mentor, but he couldn't shake the feeling that something was terribly, irrevocably wrong. He had to be sure.

He got out of the car slowly, shoving the torch he kept in the glovebox in his back pocket. The bumps and dips on the dirt road hadn't done the suspension on what – even in its heyday – had only ever been intended as a city car, any good. There were no lights in the cabin at all.

Even before he reached the door it stuck him, that feeling of the emptiness beyond, and for a moment he couldn't lift his hand.

_Denial is a fine thing,_ he thought. _But I have to know._

He knocked on the door out of politeness.

"Gideon?" he asked, suddenly glad he'd left his own car headlights on. He turned to look behind him in case the man was out on a trail somewhere and had heard him calling. Surely he would come back if he heard a friendly voice. "Gideon?" he called again, uncertainly.

He went to knock a second time, but the door swung open of its own accord. The darkness seemed to have an added quality inside the cabin, but already he could tell from the sound of his voice that something wasn't right.

He swung the torch around, revealing the empty shelves and countertops he had feared.

There was a lamp on the table and he switched it on, feeling lost. His heart sank as he spotted Gideon's badge and gun on the table. Spencer stared at them, unbelieving.

He sat down at the table, where he imagined Gideon had wanted him to, feeling – not afraid, not now his worst fears had been confirmed – but hollow, as empty as the cabin itself.

He picked up the envelope with his name on it, uncertain how to feel that Gideon had expected him to come – and expected him to find him long gone.

With that part of his mind that functioned without reference to circumstance he noted that the envelope was huge compared to its contents, pages torn from Gideon's notebook, perhaps. He began to read:

_Spencer,_

_I knew it would be you who came to the cabin to check on me. I'm sorry the explanation couldn't be better, and I'm sorry that it doesn't make more sense, but I've already told you, I just don't understand any of it anymore…_

0o0o0o0

Grace moved through her pitch dark house, her gun up and ready.

Since she'd arrived in Apple Tree Lane the patterns of her neighbours' comings and goings had solidified in her mind; the arrival of an unknown car engine on the windy side of 2 a.m. had caught her attention. The candles burning around her empty book room, where she had been quietly reading, had been quickly extinguished when she'd heard, just a little while later, the noise of a car door opening.

She listened, taut and ready, as someone opened and closed her garden gate. Their noisy footsteps matched her silent ones as she padded, barefoot, towards her own front door. They arrived either side of it at the same time, Grace and her mysterious guest. Grace stayed clear of the door, in case whoever it was tried to shoot their way in.

It seemed an age before the someone moved again. Grace could hear her heart hammering against the inside of her chest as whoever it was continued to stare at the outside of her front door, waiting for her to – what, exactly? Go back to sleep?

The knock startled her. She tensed, frozen to the spot. What kind of nefarious nocturnal person _knocked _on your door at 2 a.m.? A ruse, perhaps? She frowned down at her weapon, baffled.

The intruder knocked again.

"Grace?"

She straightened, stunned.

"Are you there?" There was a pause. "_Please be there_," he added, much more softly this time. It sounded like he'd been crying.

Without bothering to look through the peephole she drew back the chain and opened the door.

"Spencer?"

He was a mess. What she could see of his face was streaked with tears, his eyes red and puffy from crying. The rest was obscured by his hair, which had been allowed to fall forward.

"Hey," he said thickly and then paused, focussing on the gun hanging loosely at her side. His eyes travelled up to her face.

"Well, it _is_ two in the morning," she said, answering his unspoken question. "What happened?"

The confusion on his face was replaced by what Grace could only describe as agony. Suddenly she wondered whether his mother had been taken ill. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and broken, almost like a child's.

"He's gone," he said. "Gideon – he's gone."

Grace stared at him for a moment, fearful of asking him to elaborate. There were a lot of things that the word 'gone' could mean.

"I went to his cabin," he told herm and she realised he was crying again. "It was empty."

"Empty?"

"All his stuff was gone." He was trying very hard to stop the tears now, but his lower lip was trembling like he had no real control over his face. "He's gone away."

He said the last part so softly it nearly broke her heart.

"I called Hotch," he sobbed. "He took his badge and gun –"

"He left them?" Grace asked, horrified. "Just like that?"

She felt staggered. That was the act of a copper who was never coming back. If anyone knew what running away looked like, Grace did. She'd thought about doing the same thing a hundred times.

"He wrote – uh –" Spencer offered her the letter, holding out a pale, trembling hand. "You can read it, I don't mind…"

She moved to take the pages from him, feeling numb and oddly bereft for someone who had only been with the BAU for a short time. After the last few days she had felt like her family had been under threat – it wasn't a feeling she'd expected to experience again and as such, she wasn't sure how to respond. Her fingers closed around more than the letter, however.

"You're freezing," she exclaimed, taking his hand; it dawned on her that he wasn't trembling so much as shivering. "How long were you out there?"

"A couple hours," he said tearfully. "I don't know… I – uh – I started driving home but I needed – I needed to…" His eyes flicked up to her face and then away again, and she wondered what he wasn't saying. "I couldn't get warm…"

"You _drove_ here?"

Grace stuck her head out of her door; sure enough, Spencer's light blue Volvo was parked at the end of her garden among the roses, making the end of the street look like a still from an old movie. She looked back at her friend, who cleared his throat. For a moment it looked like he might say something, but he faltered and stared at his shoes instead.

Spencer was gripping her hand like the world might end if he let go.

"Come on," she said gently, and led him inside.

"Why are you carrying your gun?" he asked thickly, as she locked and chained the door.

"_You're_ armed."

"I'm not in my PJs…"

"When your car pulled up I thought –" she glanced at him. "Old habits," she finished, instead.

He stood awkwardly in the doorway to the book room while she relit the candles. Neither of them said anything about how obvious it was that she hadn't been sleeping.

Grace read the note by candlelight, with Spencer hovering nearby. It was heartfelt and stark; she could see why he wouldn't want to let it out of his sight.

"He's not coming back then," she said aloud, sadly.

_And I don't blame him_, she thought, remembering a conversation they'd had in Kansas City*.

Spencer made a muffled noise and when she looked up again he'd turned away. Controlling his grief, she supposed.

"Here," she said, pressing the letter back into his hand. He stuffed it into his pocket, no longer able to meet her eyes. It was easy to forget, sometimes, how very young Spencer seemed, when they dealt day to day with such horrors.

His earlier comment about a child's forgiveness sprang to the forefront of her mind. Spencer's father had left when he was young and for a long time _he_ had been trying to be perfect. Gideon had been as much a father figure for him as Lightfoot was for her.

"I can't – I can't –" he stuttered, quietly, and them seemed to pull himself together. "I should go. I – uh – it's late and I should –"

Grace never found out what he thought he should, as she wrapped her arms around him and he buried his face in her neck. He made a sound that was almost a whimper; she felt his legs buckle and managed to drop at roughly the same speed, so that neither of them injured their knees when they crashed to the floor. Grace held him tightly while he sobbed uncontrollably into her shoulder.

"I'm sorry – I'm sorry," he stammered eventually, pulling away. "I –"

"It's okay –"

"It's not. It's not okay – I should go."

He got to his feet, but Grace stopped him, managing to grab the sleeve of his cardigan.

"You can't drive like this," she told him. "I'm amazed you made it all the way from Shenandoah without crashing into anything."

"But –"

"_No,_" she said firmly. "Stay. Please?"

She tucked an errant strand of hair behind his ear; the movement clearly confused him for a moment and he glanced in the direction of the front door and his car, but then his shoulders slumped, defeated. It struck Grace that he had given up far too easily, and that worried her.

She picked up one of the blankets from the pile by her makeshift bed and wrapped it around his shoulders. He shivered.

"I can't get warm," he said, softly. "I –"

He pulled the blanket tighter around herself.

"Well it was a bit like hugging a snowman," she teased, gently. "I mean, if snowmen were tall, skinny and kind of bony."

A chuckle escaped him, which made her feel a hell of a lot better.

"Bony?" he asked, pulling a face.

"Well, it made you laugh. Take off your shoes."

"My – my shoes?"

"My friend Alice says feet are the windows to your soul," she said, moving to sit down. The fact that she still had hold of his cardigan meant that he had to, too; he joined her on the floor.

"She does?" he asked, and she heard the confusion in his voice.

"She's a little odd," Grace allowed, "but she's right about the feet. Shoes off."

Spencer did as he was told, shooting her bemused looks, which at least meant that he wasn't crying anymore. He glanced at her through his hair, almost shyly.

"It's always the feet that get cold first when someone's sick and the first things you need to heat up again. Socks too," she added, smiling slightly at the bright, unmatched things. "Or you'll just keep the cold in."

Spencer gave her a doubtful look that would have made her laugh in other circumstances, but he pulled them off anyway. After a moment's thought he took off his watch and gun belt too. He glanced at the makeshift bed and blushed, but didn't say anything. Hesitantly, he crawled in beside her instead, and made an involuntary noise at her sudden warmth.

It took Grace by surprise when his arms wound around her waist, almost as a reflex. Normally, he shied away from human contact, and she suspected that he tolerated her disruptive presence and occasional hugs because he liked her company. He was so cold that she made no move to dislodge him, letting her friend cling to her until some of the heat began to return to his body. She could feel his eyes on her, embarrassed, so she did what she always did when she was uncomfortable: tried to make him laugh.

"Hey," she said. "At least this time we've got clothes on."

0o0

"I can't believe he's gone," Spencer sighed. He was holding the letter against his chest as if to read it, but Grace would have been prepared to swear he had already memorised its contents. Besides, given how low some of the candles were getting now, he couldn't have read much anyway. She could barely make out his face.

Although they had started out leaning with their backs against one of the bookshelves, as the night wore into morning they had gradually slipped lower and lower until Grace was propping herself up against a bank of pillows and Spencer (who had sort of slipped sideways at the same time) was resting his head on her stomach. They had spent the past few hours alternately grieving and comforting one another. Grace had been astonished to discover tears on her own face and when Spencer had spotted them he'd done his shaky best to look after her, too.

Gideon was the kind of person who left a lasting impression. She felt a little like she'd misplaced her long-lost uncle. She stroked Spencer's hair, absently.

"It's like you told Strauss," she said. "Some things just stick with you. They change you – and solace is hard to come by. I guess running away was the only thing he had left, after Sarah."

"I guess I just thought better of him…"

Grace looked at his shape in the flickering shadows.

"You're telling me you've never run away from anything?"

"No," he said quietly. "At least – not physically."

Absently, he scratched his arm were the scars of needle tracks were beginning to fade.

Grace looked away. She'd been running away the entire time she'd known him, and he'd 'thought better' of Gideon. What would he think of her, if he knew the truth? Would he be disappointed to know that she'd flirted with the idea of carrying on, the very morning she'd landed in New Orleans? Or did his talent for profiling allow him to see right through her?

"Maybe some things are just too much to bear," she murmured.

Possibly he sensed her turmoil, because he laid his hand over hers.

"I know," he said. "I just wish he would have said goodbye."

"I wouldn't have been able to," said Grace, after a moment's thought, realising that this was true. "I couldn't have faced any of you. Goodbye makes it sound like you're never coming back."

Spencer didn't say anything, but he kept a hold of her hand.

Everything went quiet for a while, save the occasional soft pop or gutter of a candle going out. Some of the shadows receded while others took on a more definite form; the cold, grey dawn light began to soak into the sky outside, intruding into their candlelit fortress.

"Grace?" Spencer said, softly. She had become so accustomed to the silence that it was a moment or two before she replied.

"Mmm?"

"I don't know what happened to you before you left England – I – uh – I know it makes you really sad sometimes, and I'm not glad it happened to you," he said, speaking more gently to her than he had in all the time she'd known him. "But I _am_ glad you're here."

She turned her hand under his and laced their fingers together, unable to tell him how much his words had meant. He gave her hand the briefest of squeezes.

"So am I," she said, her voice unusually croaky.

There was another lengthy silence, in which the two of them began to hear the birds of the morning beginning their songs. It was warmer now, a little lighter: peaceful. She knew he wasn't asleep from the pattern of his breathing.

"Hey, Spencer?" she said, at last.

His voice was low when he responded, free of his earlier tension.

"Yeah?"

"Thanks," she said, inwardly marvelling at how small her voice sounded, even to her.

"For what?"

She felt him twist so he was lying on his side, peering up at her in the darkness.

"For not asking."

0o0o0o0

_It is when we are most lost that we sometimes find our finest friends._

_The Brothers Grimm_

0o0

*See Moments of Grace, Season Two, Act Three, No Mortal Lock – Chapter Three, Left for Dead.


	6. Scared to Death

**Essential listening – Cherry Blossom, by Paolo Nutini**

**0o0**

JJ hovered in the doorway to the conference room, watching her team mates grieving.

They were gathered around Reid's desk, watching the younger agent stare at Gideon's letter; his final farewell. The departure of their senior agent had rattled them all, but none more so than Spencer. Gideon had been his mentor – in many ways a second father.

His colleagues had gravitated towards him as soon as they had seen the change in his behaviour. He was putting up walls again, trying to keep them from seeing how deeply hurt he was. Morgan was sat on Emily's desk, while she hovered behind their friend, uncertain.

JJ's eyes moved to the kitchen area, where Grace was making herself a drink with what looked like an unusual amount of care. It had surprised her that she, too, wasn't staying near to Spence, especially since they usually seemed so close. She knew Reid had looked after Grace in San Francisco, after the fire scene had made her lose her lunch* – and then there was that night in New Orleans**…

She watched as the woman walked back to her desk, neither too quickly nor too slowly to be of note to anyone. She was, JJ thought, being very careful to look totally normal this morning. Perhaps it was her way of coping with upheaval.

Emily gave her a grim smile as she sat down, which Grace returned, sending a momentary glance at Reid. Without that tiny, thoughtless gesture JJ would have said that Grace didn't know her friend was there at all.

It occurred to her that perhaps Grace was more aware of Spencer's current mood than she was letting on and had simply worked out, as JJ had, that sometimes he was best left to deal with things on his own. It was something their colleagues had been unable to fathom, particularly since Georgia.

When Spence needed help, he asked for it – perhaps not in so many words, or even out loud, but he _would_ ask. He would gravitate towards the support he needed, occasionally without even knowing it. It was probably something to do with growing up largely self reliant.

Grace glanced over at the three agents again, looking as though she felt more out of place than ever.

"Gideon left everything," said Garcia, emerging from his office; everyone looked up at her except Spencer, who was still staring at Gideon's letter with that little frown on his face. Garcia shifted the box of things she was carrying. Someone had given her the task of clearing it out, but Penelope hadn't really known where to start. "Except the photographs."

"He always said those were like his family," said Reid; JJ saw the look of concern pass between Morgan and Emily.

Gideon had made it pretty obvious that he wasn't coming back.

"What shall we do with all of this?" Garcia asked. JJ noticed, with the ghost of a smile, that she had chosen to remove the plants – the only living occupants of the office – first.

"He left it for us," said Grace, and they all turned to stare at her. She was making notes in the margin of her file now, as if she hadn't said a word.

"We can't just take his stuff," said Emily.

"He left it behind because he didn't want it," said Grace. "We take what we can use and auction the rest for charity."

She gathered her things together, conscious that three of her colleagues were staring at her like she'd gone insane. Even Reid was watching her, though his expression was one of curiosity.

"Forgive me, Pearce," said Morgan, incredulous. "But that seems a little cold."

JJ frowned, thinking that she might have a point. Grace shrugged, picking up her tea and headed into the conference room via the other door. JJ took this as her cue to leave and she set off for Hotch's office, wondering just what Grace had left behind when she'd left her old team in London. Strauss was in Hotch's office, so JJ slowed down, hesitant to interrupt.

"… his years of service are appreciated," she overheard Strauss say, and realised they were talking about Gideon. "We're looking for his replacement."

"That was fast," Hotch said, echoing JJ's thoughts.

"Well, the Bureau doesn't like to leave posts empty for long," she said. "I'd like your input."

JJ raised an eyebrow; perhaps Strauss' brief foray into the field had done her some good.

"I appreciate that," said Hotch.

Deciding it was a diplomatic time to interrupt, JJ knocked on the door.

"Sir, we're gathering."

She couldn't decide whether Hotch was relieved; it was difficult to tell, with him.

"Thank you," he said, and they made their escape.

"Everything okay?" she asked and Hotch gave her the sort of exasperated grimace, shrug and eye-roll combination she had come to associate with meetings with Strauss and mountains of paperwork. She nodded. It was that kind of day.

The team was already assembled around the table, all doing their own personal interpretations of 'this is a normal day'.

"Okay," JJ began, handing out the files. "We have four victims in Oregon. Two male, two female."

"I got this," Hotch interrupted.

"Uh, sure," said JJ, surprised.

The team looked up from their files, expectant. Generally if Hotch deviated from their usual pattern there was a good reason.

"I know that you've all been wondering what this was all about," he said, as the team settled. "And – uh – you know I've known Jason for many years and I can tell you, I've no idea."

JJ nodded as the others took this in. Theirs was the kind of job that could eat you alive.

"But it doesn't even matter," Hotch went on. "What matters is we're here, and we're going to continue. Portland Field Office uncovered a mass grave of three bodies, killed six months ago.

The mood in the room shifted to business-like; reassured.

"Nearby they found another body. Causes of death range from burning alive to asphyxiation. No sexual assault."

"Well, the torture's clearly sadistic," Morgan reflected.

"And the lack of sexual preference is gonna make it hard to tell id the UnSub is male or female," said Reid.

Emily frowned.

"Typically, female serial killers stick to the same MO," she remarked. "Looks like this guy's all over the place."

"Have we got a handle on ethnicity yet?" Grace asked; JJ noted that her friend was taking care not to look at the screen when the burn victim's picture was up.

"Two Caucasian, one Chinese, one Hispanic," she said, and Grace nodded.

"So he doesn't pick based on appearance," she muttered.

"Most recent victim is Jenny Whitman," said Hotch. "Asphyxiated, discovered yesterday."

"How long had she been in the ground?" Morgan asked.

Grace frowned at the grave picture.

"No more than a few days," she said, peering at the lack of decomposition.

"How long was she missing?" Spencer asked.

"She was never reported missing," Hotch told them.

JJ watched as one by one they all looked up from their files. That was unusual.

"What about the others?" Spencer asked, with a frown.

"Only one," said Hotch.

"One of four?"

"Rick Holland was reported missing nine months ago, but the search was called off," JJ explained.

"Family discovered his car at the train station, but more importantly they received emails from him saying that they needed time to figure things out," Hotch added.

"And his family bought that?" Morgan asked, astonished.

"I guess the alternative was too hard to accept," said Hotch.

"Reaching out could be a sign of remorse," Spencer theorised.

"Psychopaths don't apologise for their behaviour," said Hotch, firmly. "This guy's covering his tracks."

"Well, it's working," Morgan observed, sadly.

"So," said Emily, getting to her feet for a closer look at the crime scene photos. "Three victims he buried in one grave and only Jenny Whitman in the other…"

"You think it's a pattern?" Morgan asked.

"Uh – it's hard to tell," Emily shrugged.

"There could be more bodies," said Grace, staring at the map. "That trail covers a lot of ground."

"Well, if it is a pattern," Hotch observed, "it's one down, two to go."

0o0o0o0

_The daoist philosopher Lao Tze once wrote, "He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still."_

0o0

Grace had intended to sit across from the table, where her earlier comments about the contents of Gideon's office wouldn't get her glared at, but Spencer apparently had other ideas. She wasn't entirely sure how he managed it, but he'd got her cornered at one end of the table seat before anyone else made it on the jet.

"You're putting up walls," he hissed, as the others began to climb aboard. "Pushing us away."

"You're one to talk!" she scoffed, louder than she intended.

Emily shot them both a look; Grace blushed, feeling like a naughty schoolgirl who had been caught out by her big sister. Mercifully, Emily turned away, somehow managing to engage both Morgan and JJ in conversation. Distracting them, Grace realised, so they wouldn't interrupt.

When she glanced at Spencer, he was blushing too. He lowered his voice.

"Let's just say I know it when I see it," he told her, cheeks still tinged pink. "Sometimes you act like you're not really a part of the BAU, but you _are_."

They both glanced up as Hotch climbed on board.

"I just – I've – _we've_ already lost Gideon this week, we can't lose you, too," he hissed.

"I'm not going anywhere," she said, after a moment, taking in his worried expression.

There was a ferocity behind his gentle brown eyes that she hadn't seen before. She _had_ been pulling away that morning – in the months of darkness at home, when the remains of her life had been on show for all to see, keeping all but a few close friends at arm's length had been her primary survival strategy. Even then there had been days when she hadn't spoken to another soul if she could help it.

It would be different here, she decided. It already _was_ different here. Grace was about to reassure him when Hotch sat down across from them. He looked from one agent to the other, taking in their guilty expressions.

"Everything alright?" he asked, after a moment.

They both said 'yes' far too quickly, which their boss clearly didn't miss; he declined to comment, however, which was something of a relief.

Embarrassed and wishing that she hadn't chosen to spend her working life with a bunch of profilers, Grace pulled out her files and got to work.

It was a relief when the seatbelt warning signs clicked off and Reid, who kept glancing at her worriedly, got up to get a drink. Although she appreciated his concern, Grace preferred to work things out on her own.

"Can we go over what Portland found?" Hotch asked, summoning them all to the table once more.

"One female and two male victims found buried together in the same grave," said JJ, handing the files around again. "All twenty-five to thirty, all been dead six months."

"It sounds like three different MOs," Emily observed.

"MOs can change over time," Grace frowned. "It's the signatures that stay the same."

"Yeah, over time," said Emily. "But overnight?"

"Uh – Gary Taylor, the Phantom Sniper was all over the map, just like this guy," said Reid, resting his file on the back of the seat. "He changed his MO as his need to control the situation changed."

"So the torture here is more about control than pain," said Grace.

"What about the fresh grave?" Hotch asked.

"Female, twenty-eight, dead roughly twenty-four hours," JJ summarised. "She was asphyxiated."

"Do we know how?" Grace asked, looking up.

"No," JJ confirmed. "The ME's still looking into it. They've ruled out manual and foreign object so far."

"So, what?" Emily asked. "He trapped her in a room and sucked all the air out of it?"

"It's a good thing this guy's dump site's been compromised," Morgan remarked.

"As soon as the UnSub knows that," Emily reflected. "He may feel pressured that we're onto him. Could push him to make a mistake."

None of them were under the illusion that they'd get this guy without more bodies. What help they'd be, given his total disregard for a regular MO, Grace wasn't sure. She was distracted by a chirping from the laptop on the table.

"Hey, you!" Garcia whispered. Grace grinned as the analyst peered up at Reid, a glint of mischief in her eyes. "Uh, down here," she encouraged.

The realisation crossing his face was almost comical. Embarrassed, he turned the laptop around so Garcia could see them all – though it meant Grace had to lean closer to Spencer to be included.

"Yeah, we believe you," she hissed and he sent her a mock glare.

"Good thing you're handsome, doctor," Garcia grinned as Grace craned around the screen to see. "Attention team members, this killer guy continues to stoop to new lows by posing as his victims," she told him. "He's also manipulated two of the families into thinking that everything was okay, even after they were reported missing. One of the fake emails was from their daughter. She said she met this _guy _and was taking him to her favourite place in Australia for a couple of weeks – family contacted the Australian authorities after too much time had passed."

Grace shook her head. There was low and then there was rock bottom.

"Maybe it's not just a counter-measure," she mused. "Playing with their next of kin could be another form of torture."

Hotch nodded.

"This guy sure knows a lotta personal information about his victims," Morgan observed.

"How did he get access to their email accounts?" Emily asked.

"Screen name was the same, but the domain was different," Garcia explained. "Family never noticed."

"Sneaky."

"When I find more pieces of the puzzle you'll know. Garcie out!"

"This guy's creative," Hotch remarked. "Let's see the details one more time, just to make sure we haven't missed anything."

0o0o0o0

The Field Office in Portland looked the same to Grace as all the others had. They all had their idiosyncrasies, but after several months of spending a couple of days in each one, more or less nationwide, their individuality was being lost in a blur of anonymity. She thought it was possible that she'd actually started dreaming of being in one endless, anonymous Field Office. The only things that really changed were the faces.

Special Agent Bill Calvert was a large, cheerful man who looked like he might have been a Navy Seal before joining the Bureau. He radiated wholesome authority and could easily have been a poster boy for the positive image of the Oregon division of FBI.

He was waiting for them in the conference room, which had obviously been reserved for their visit.

"You must be the BAU," he said, as they approached. "I'm Special Agent Bill Calvert."

"Hi, Jennifer Jareau," said JJ, shaking his hand. "This is Supervisory Special Agent Aaron Hotcher. These are agents Morgan, Prentiss, Pearce and Doctor Reid."

She pointed them out as they variously nodded, smiled or shook hands.

"I appreciate your help on this case," said Calvert.

"Ah, you're from Boston, huh?" Morgan asked.

"The accent's kinda hard to miss in Oregon, right?" Calvert smiled at him.

"We'd like to have a look around Jenny Whitman's apartment," said Hotch, all business.

"I'd take you myself, but I'm waitin' to meet her family, so I'll have another agent drive you," he nodded.

"Thank you," said Hotch. "Pearce, I want you to take another look at Wildwood Trail, see if anything jumps out at you."

_Well now_, thought Grace. _There was a loaded statement._

She raised an eyebrow.

"See what you can – uh – see," he continued, making the request for her to use her talents as official as it could be in company.

"Sir."

"I'll stay behind to work victimology," said Emily.

"Great," said Hotch, shepherding the others out of the door. "I could use some extra hands. Call you if we find anything."

"Mmm-hmm," said JJ.

Grace waved over her shoulder as she followed the boys across the office. Hotch met her eyes when she stepped into the lift, leaving her in no doubt that he knew what he was asking. She didn't miss the sideways look Spencer was giving her, either.

She stepped out into the main lobby when deception had become a normal part of her working life.

0o0o0o0

The drive to Jenny Whitman's apartment was unusually quiet, and not only because they had a local agent driving them. What goes on the team, stays on the team, as they said, and today all of them had things on their minds. The departure of a friend and colleague could do that. Even Hotch was unusually terse, with his mind fully on the case.

Spencer watched him out of the corner of his eye. Unless he had misunderstood, Hotch had all but ordered Grace to… He frowned, searching for an adequate description for a phenomenon that Grace had been careful to ensure that he observed only the once – and that he had been careful not to enquire about further.

He would have to ask her for the proper term, if he could ever figure out how to phrase the question.

Whatever it was called, Hotch clearly knew about it, which puzzled him, given how adamant Grace had been about not telling Hotch in her sleep. It made him wonder – if Hotch already know about the ghosts – what else she could be keeping from them all.

They pulled up outside the apartment block and piled out of the car.

"Whitman's place is on the third floor," he said, as Morgan called the elevator. It wasn't a large space and Hotch gave it a dubious once over.

"Can you get in there?" he asked.

"I'll meet you guys up there," said Hotch, heading for the stairs.

_Suit yourself_, Spencer thought.

Four flights of stairs was a long walk.

He had been thinking about the wonders of modern technology like elevators and automation (not including computers, which he didn't entirely approve of), when the elevator ground to a halt.

The machinery made a horrible grinding noise that suggested it hadn't been oiled or maintained recently and wished to register a complaint.

Spencer looked at the ceiling dubiously, hoping that this was just a glitch.

Morgan bounced up and down, making the whole car shake. It squeaked.

"Don't do that," said Spencer, but Morgan ignored him and did it again.

"Why isn't it moving?" he asked.

"I don't know."

To Spencer's growing annoyance, Morgan started punching the buttons on the panel. Why couldn't people just leave a thing alone?

"Don't – stop it," he complained; Morgan looked at him. "Don't –"

"What? What's the problem?"

_We're hanging in space, four floors above the ground, being held up by nothing more than a steel cable that has just stopped working, and you're making me nervous_, he thought.

Aloud, he said, "Don't do that!" more urgently this time.

"Why not?"

"'Cause there are six elevator related deaths per year, not to mention ten thousand injuries that require hospitalisation," he said, gesticulating at Morgan. "Chill out."

He knew he'd made a mistake when Morgan grinned at him.

"Those sound like pretty good odds to me," he said, and Spencer groaned inwardly. Any time stuck in an elevator with Morgan in a teasing mood was going to really drag out. As usual, though, Morgan knew how to push _all_ his buttons. "What're – what're you scared, Reid?" he asked.

Spencer glared at him, aware that this was going to devolve fairly quickly into an argument.

"I'm not scared!"

"You're scared – you are!" he exclaimed, delighted.

"I don't want to be in an elevator with you to be honest –"

"You're scared," Morgan repeated gleefully, punching buttons on the panel. "How about if I push that? Or that?"

Reid was about to knock his hand away when the car dropped. He grabbed at the walls of the elevator, terrified. It felt like an electric shock had passed through his entire body.

"Woah," said Morgan, bracing himself, equally afraid. "Woah, okay."

Spencer's mind raced. They couldn't have travelled more than a few feet, or they'd both have been flung about like ragdolls – which meant that there was still a lot of air between them and the bottom of the shaft. They_ had_ to get out of there.

"Um – hit the – hit the –" he reached for the emergency alarm control, but Morgan was closer.

Neither of them wanted to move too much in case if dislodged something and – Spencer tried not to think about it, but his mind was already relaying images of mangled bodies in the basements of apartment blocks.

The alarm didn't seem to be working right.

"Push it –" Spencer snapped. "It's not a –"

"Push – pull, push – pull," Morgan retorted, sounding just as anxious. "I'm doin' it, nothin's happening!"

Spencer pressed himself closer to the wall of the elevator.

"Try – try – pry the – pry the door open – just –" he stammered, urgently.

Morgan seemed to think this was as good an idea as any. He moved across the car and did what he could.

"Yeah –" said Spencer, as his friend tried to break them out.

If they got out of this alive, Spencer decided he would kill him. Hiding the body wouldn't be a problem, after all.

"It's stuck, man," Morgan grunted, gritting his teeth.

He stepped back and the movement triggered something, dropping them another couple of feet. Spencer tried really hard not to breathe too much as Morgan informed the universe that he would _not_ be dying this morning.

"No, no, no, no, not today – no, not today!"

Spencer flattened himself against the wall, hoping it might help.

"Hotch!" he cried, his voice several registers higher than normal. He closed his eyes. He didn't want to die here, not like this.

"_Hotch!_" Morgan yelled and started pushing buttons again.

Spencer didn't even bother to yell at him this time. With shaking hands he felt inside his pocket for his phone – but who could he call? Garcia could maybe send a repair man or the fire brigade, but his automatic thought was for his mom. He stopped. He couldn't scare her like that. His fingers brushed the keys as Morgan worked the malfunctioning alarm.

"Come on, come on," the other agent growled. "I got a hot date this weekend – I am _not_ gonna miss it!"

_How can you possibly be thinking about sex at a time like this?_ Spencer demanded inside his own head. He tried to say something out loud, but he was too frightened. The car gave another lurch – he closed his eyes again.

_This is it,_ he thought. _I'm going to die falling four storeys to the ground in a malfunctioning elevator car with a loud, irritating ex-cop from Chicago, who is also my best friend._

_And HE has a date this weekend_.

Mercifully, the elevator doors juddered open. Morgan flung himself out onto the landing, right in front of Hotch.

"Hallelujah," said Morgan.

"Was that the alarm?" Hotch asked, staring at them.

Spencer nearly laughed. He edged towards the door, in case the elevator had any more surprises in store.

"Are you guys okay?" Hotch asked, looking them over.

"I'll get back to you on that," Spencer breathed, gratefully making it onto solid ground.

Hotch took off down the corridor and Morgan followed, still breathing hard. Spencer walked slowly after them, vowing never to get in an elevator again and horribly aware that when it came to it he hadn't been thinking about his mom at all, but about the taste of strawberries and the scent of bergamot.

0o0

* See Moments of Grace, Season Two, Act Two, Ashes and Dust.

**See Moments of Grace, Season Two, Act One, Jones.


	7. Teamwork

**Essential listening – The Fear, Ben Howard**

**0o0**

The apartment manager was waiting for them outside Jenny Whitman's place. He was one of those older men who thought that Hawaiian shirts and surf shorts were a good combination. Spencer couldn't tell if he was annoyed at their intrusion or feeling bad about his tenant's death, but either way he seemed a little aggrieved.

"The FBI was already here two days ago," he said, as he let them in. "Didn't find anything."

"We're from the Behavioural Analysis Unit," Spencer told him.

"What's that mean?"

"It means that we – we study – ah – human behaviour," he stammered, still feeling the effects of being stuck in a death trap with Morgan. "We don't just look at evidence. It helps us to determine why this killer chose this particular victim."

The landlord nodded and the three of them spread out, subjecting their victim's possessions to some scrutiny.

"Place has a… lived-in feel to it," said Reid, only just managing to stop the laughter emerging.

There were boxes all over the place.

"Looks like she spent most of her free time here," Hotch observed, picking up a copy of _HALO_.

"No messages on the answering machine," he said, taking a look.

"Guys," said Morgan, "come and look at this."

They followed him to Whitman's tiny bathroom.

"There's bath products all around the tub, but she never turned the shower on," said Morgan, pointing them out. Spencer frowned, momentarily distracted by the number of bath products Jenny Whitman had felt she'd needed.

"What makes you say that?" the landlord asked.

"It's got nothin' but boxes inside," he told him, opening the shower door. "She used it for storage."

"Uh – did anything ever strike you as odd about Jenny?" Spencer asked.

"You know what," the man said. "When she first moved in here, two – two months ago, she walked up and down those stairs a hundred times." He laughed. "She wouldn't use the elevator."

"Yeah?" Morgan snorted. "Well, I don't blame her."

Spencer nodded fervently.

"Okay," said Morgan, as they moved back into her living room. "We know Jenny Whitman didn't like tight spaces or the elevator, what else do we know?"

"We know that he preys on people that're new to the city, with no strong social ties," he said.

"Jenny fits the model, she's an easy target," said Morgan.

"And he's betting that she won't be missed," Hotch remarked.

Spencer's phone buzzed in his pocket; he took it out as Hotch and Morgan ran a few more questions by the landlord. It was Grace:

_Did you just butt-dial me, or have you been abducted?_

Spencer frowned, not sure what to say.

_Neither. Tell you later._

0o0o0o0

"We have been over the details of this case so many times I could cite it in my sleep," Emily grumbled.

"Nothing like being prepared," said JJ. She could feel her friend's frustration.

"Sorry to interrupt," said Agent Calvert, coming in, "but I just spoke to Jenny Whitman's family."

"Oh, did they give you any insight?" Emily asked, hopefully.

"Well, they weren't what you'd call close-knit," he said. "Looks like she wanted a fresh start, struck out on her own."

"Yeah, Garcia couldn't come up with any connection between the victims," Emily told him, "Different socio-economic backgrounds, different education and areas of work."

"But they all had relocated to Portland," said JJ, "Without any family or friends – one divorced, the rest single.

Emily nodded. It wasn't much, but it was a start.

"They did have that in common," she said. "New to the city and they all lived alone."

"Well that describes me to a tee," said Calvert, cheerily. "I transferred to this Field Office a month ago, I'm thirty, single and don't have much of a social life since I work so much."

Emily chuckled.

"Well," said JJ, seeing a possible means of moving the case forward. "I need to go over whatever evidence you found in the other victim's homes and then I would love to pick your brain about how you got settled into the city."

"Absolutely," said Calvert.

"Hey, you know who else might have an insight?" said Emily. "Grace."

JJ nodded.

"She came to us from London," she explained, on Calvert's look of confusion.

"That's a hell of a relocation," he mused, whistling.

"Yeah," said Emily. "We'll talk to her if she ever gets back from Wildwood Trail," she chuckled. "You know, the way Hotch asked her to go out there made it sound like she was hunting zombies or something."

JJ laughed.

You needed a bit of humour at a time like this.

0o0o0o0

The graves were fairly shallow, considering.

Grace looked around. The trail was, in a word, gorgeous. It was the kind of place people took their kids for a picnic, or walked their dogs. The idea that someone had been using it to stash the corpses of their victims galled her beyond belief.

She sighed, glad that she'd thought to bring a pair of sunglasses – and that one of the agents from the Portland Field Office would be driving her back. After this, she wouldn't be road-safe.

She went through the ritual of closing her eyes and holding her breath, feeling the atmosphere around her tighten and become dense.

She took a few hesitant steps forward before she opened her eyes.

"Bugger."

0o0o0o0

"Okay, we know this guy used Wildwood Trail as his personal graveyard for six months," said Morgan. "That site's been blown for him now. Which means that he's been forced to change part of his MO."

"Which won't be easy for somebody who thrive on being in control," Hotch added. The men and women of the Portland Field Office were taking diligent notes, hoping for anything that might help them. "The reason he's gotten away with these first three murders is that he's been meticulous at every stage, from how he chooses his victims to their torture and their burial."

"To us, these victims appear to be non-specific – other than being new to Portland, all they seem to have shared is a tortuous death," said Prentiss.

"But you think the UnSub chooses them for another reason, too?" Calvert guessed.

"We think so," Prentiss confirmed.

"The tortures lack a sexual component," said Reid. "Which is incredibly rare. I think it's more about – uh – not necessarily about exerting power, but more like over-compensating for a lack of it."

"This guy craves control," Morgan explained. "He's comin' from a place of weakness and tryin' to demonstrate strength. Now, we see this a lot in UnSubs who've been abused."

"The lack of sexual assault could be as simple as the fact that he's impotent," said Hotch, getting to his feet. "Something that he's trying to hide."

"A man this obsessed with control likely feels powerless in his everyday life," Prentiss added. "So he would crave stability, security – he's most likely married. Uh – if he is impotent he could keep up appearances by adopting children."

"And someone this methodical had every moment planned," said Reid. "If he is captured he'll most likely take his own life rather than give up any sort of control."

The victims' lack of defensive wounds suggest that they willingly put themselves in danger," Morgan explained. "So, someone of authority, otherwise easily trusted, put them up to this.

"Also the victims' families were led to believe their loved ones were alive and well through emails written by this murderer," Prentiss told them.

"He's calculating and he's intelligent, and we're going to have to do something that he's not expecting," said Hotch.

"Like what?" asked Calvert.

"Like warn his potential victims," he said, glancing up as the door opened, the blinds rattling against the glass. Pearce and her chaperone slipped unobtrusively back into the conference room. "Agent Jareau will take you through the media strategy. Excuse me."

He piloted an unresisting Agent Pearce out of the conference room and into a side office. She was wearing a pair of dark glasses.

"Well?" he asked.

"Multiple victims in eight more graves," she said.

Hotch frowned. She sounded exhausted.

"How many?"

"At least eight, probably ten or twelve," said Grace, with a sigh. "I think Prentiss was wrong about the pattern. He's taking them as they present themselves."

"Are you sure?"

Although her eyes were obscured behind her glasses, Hotch was sure she was subjecting him to a withering stare. He wasn't all that surprised. He didn't entirely trust her methods and she knew it.

"You'll have to confirm it with a slightly more scientific survey, but yes, I'm sure."

She sounded snappy, irritable. It wasn't like her. Even frustrated, Grace had a tendency to bury her feelings. He caught himself wondering whether her usual even temper was an act for the team's benefit.

"Anything else strike you?" he asked, watching her body language. She was holding herself more carefully than she had been earlier in the day; oddly tense.

"They all died terrified," she said, bluntly. "The graves were exactly five paces apart and on the same alignment, along the edge of the riverbank. It's a nice place, peaceful even."

"He won't have chosen it out of remorse."

"No," Pearce agreed. "But maybe he chose it because he liked being out there. He could have been revisiting."

"We'll re-canvas the rangers," Hotch nodded, thoughtfully. He paused. There was a smudge beneath his agent's nose that looked an awful lot like blood. "Are you okay?" he asked.

Pearce appeared to consider this for a moment.

"Well, apart from feeling like someone's trying to drive a railway spike through my left eyeball, fine."

"I have some aspirin in my briefcase," he offered, concerned.

He wished he'd made her outline exactly what her body finding method did to her before making use of it. She'd said it took a toll on her, but how much?

"Thanks," she said, wearily. "If I take any more I'll probably OD."

"And the nosebleed?"

Pearce lifted a hand to her face, self-consciously, and wiped away the smudge of dried blood with her thumb.

"Does it happen every time?" he asked, sorry he'd asked her to do this.

"Not every time," she admitted, after a moment. "But most."

"I'm sorry," he said, and really meant it. "I didn't know."

Pearce shrugged.

"I don't mind if it helps us catch 'em," she said.

He nodded.

"Are you fit for field duty?"

"Given a nap and a cup of tea I'll be as right as rain," she said, and he could tell she was lying. She wasn't even making an effort.

"You'll tell me if you're not?"

"Yes Guv'," she said, without thinking.

The unconscious use of her old boss's nominative made Hotch pause for a moment. She was clearly running on automatic right now.

"Tell the others –" he began, but she held up a hand.

"I'll tell them I have a horrible headache," she told him. "Simple lies are the easiest to stick to, especially in a room full of profilers."

Hotch watched her face. There was something furtive about her, he realised.

"What are you hiding?" he asked.

"Nothing."

"I would remind you that I'm not only your colleague and Unit Chief," he said, sternly. "But also a profiler with seventeen years of experience."

The young agent sighed.

"Oh, fine," she huffed.

It struck him as remarkably sulky for a twenty-five year old FBI agent. She removed her shades, though her eyes were still squeezed shut.

_Light sensitivity_, Hotch thought.

"But don't say I didn't try…"

Reluctantly, Pearce opened her eyes.

Aaron took a slow step backwards. Where normally, Agent Pearce had piercing irises of unsettling blue, they were now entirely pitch black, as if the pupils had expanded to fill the entire lens.

"Does… does it wear off?" he asked, when he found his voice again. It was remarkably level, all things considered.

Pearce nodded, an oddly defiant expression on her now eerie face.

_She's expecting me to throw her off the team,_ he realised. _Or at least have her transferred to somewhere more convenient._

He considered the idea for a moment – after all, who wanted to try to keep something like seeing the dead (because he couldn't really deny what had happened to the woman's eyes) out of reports?

"And you can see?" he asked, making up his mind.

Apart from anything else, Grace Pearce was a very good agent, and they'd already lost Gideon this week.

"The shadows are… unusual," she said, apparently assessing his expression. "But I'm trained to use a firearm like this."

It was difficult to gauge what she was thinking, without the usual cues from the eyes. He nodded and glanced out of the door, wondering where the hell you sent someone for training like that. He imagined her stubbornly practicing on the firing range late at night, eyes hollow and black, the blood running down her chin.

Two unsettling orbs of jet were watching him now as she waited to find out what he would do.

"I'd keep the shades on, for the moment," he offered.

She let out the breath she'd been holding.

0o0o0o0

She was flagging and she knew it, but, fortified by several cups of English Breakfast (she'd taken to stuffing packs of various teas in her go bag since the dearth of anything drinkable in Wisconsin), the after-effects of her search of Wildwood Trail were just about bearable.

Grateful that she hadn't had to make such a detailed search here as she had in Nevada*, she suspected this headache would remain with her to the end of the day, but no longer. It had already been with her overnight, but she _had_ slept at least. It was odd how the knowledge that the rest of the BAU were in the adjoining rooms made her feel safe enough to surrender to exhaustion.

Morgan and Prentiss had gone out first thing with Calvert, to a waterlogged corpse on the edge of the river. The scant details they had so far suggested that this was one young man that JJ's broadcast had been too late to save. With any luck, the UnSub would soon be finding his victim pool drying up.

With a care born of knowing that Reid would only do it again if it wasn't exactly right, Grace marked the graves she had observed out at the trail on a detailed map of that part of the park. JJ had put the new 'sites of interest' down to her forensic background, for which Grace was grateful. Having _that_ conversation with Hotch had been bad enough.

Spencer, who has been almost utterly silent on the subject of ghosts since she'd introduced him to Frank's mother, back in Virginia, had rather shyly approached her at breakfast and bombarded her with questions until the others had joined them. She suspected he was trying to establish how her sight worked, which she didn't actually know herself. It made a pleasant change, now two members of the team knew about part of her more clandestine talents (and didn't appear inclined to report her or make her leave), to be able to make use of a small part of them. It felt good to be trusted again, however tentatively.

She looked up when the conference phone went off. She had taken to calling it 'that thing on the table', much to Garcia's professional annoyance. It reminded her of something out of Star Trek.

"Hotchner," Hotch answered.

"Hey," Morgan's voice was quiet and compressed as it came out of the Polycom, as if it had been squeezed. "That landlady Prentiss spoke to was right to be worried. We just found Patrick Walker dead in the river."

"And – uh – it was exactly what you predicted," Emily added. "He found a new place to dump the body."

"Or just left him where he killed him," Grace mused, eyeing the multiple MOs displayed on the board.

"Fire, hanging, asphyxiation – now we've got a drowning," said Hotch, who appeared to be thinking along the same lines.

"I think it's someone who's afraid of drowning," said Reid, suddenly.

"What do you mean?" Hotch asked.

"Yeah – uh – it hit me when Morgan freaked out when we were stuck in the elevator," Reid said.

Grace met JJ's eyes and smiled.

"You got stuck in an elevator?" Prentiss asked, amused.

"I would pay good money to see that," said Grace. Reid shot her a brief glare as JJ turned away, sniggering at the mental image.

"_I_ freaked?" Morgan demanded.

Grace snorted.

"Well, that's not important," Reid said, hurriedly.

_So, you both freaked out_, Grace thought, _and you don't want us to know_.

"Here's what is," Reid went on. "If you look at the MOs of the victims, what do they all have in common?" He looked around before clarifying. "They could all be classified as anxiety disorders – i-it's right out of the diagnostics and statistical manual. It lists five sub-types of phobias."

"Most of those are environmental and situational," Hotch observed.

"Exactly," Reid exclaimed.

"So it's all about fear," Hotch expanded. "These people are being killed by their fears."

"They died terrified," Grace muttered, rubbing her forehead, missing the sideways glances that both Hotch and Reid were sending her.

0o0o0o0

Downtown Portland was baking in the midday heat.

Emily hoped none of its residents had a fear of heat exhaustion. She glanced at the young agent beside her. Reid had said barely anything since they'd set out from the Field Office. He'd been coping pretty well so far, or at least putting on a decent show of it in front of the team. She guessed that Gideon's departure had been weighing on his mind.

"So, Hotch is even more intense now that Gideon's gone."

Reid snorted.

"Tch-yeah, I've noticed," he said.

Unlike the weeks when he'd been 'recovering' from Atlanta, he seemed happy enough to join a conversation if one presented itself, if a little reluctant to start one. As if he'd suddenly realised that he was supposed to be being more animated; pretending to be okay. It was something, at least.

"Do you think that's gonna change?" she pressed him.

"I certainly think we'll find out," he shrugged.

"What about you?" she asked, her head slightly to one side. "You okay?"

"Oh – I'm – I'm great," he told her, smiling brightly and utterly refusing to meet her eyes.

She didn't believe him for a second and his smile, for a moment, became slightly more genuine – an acknowledgement that he knew that she knew.

She gave a hollow laugh.

"Do you wanna talk about it?"

His expression closed off for a second and she was afraid he'd shut them out the way he had before, but he glanced up after a moment.

"What's there to – talk about, really?" he asked, still with that air of false cheer. It was brittle, but as a shield it was just about good enough to prevent her gauging how upset he really was.

"Gideon," she said gently, raising her eyebrows.

"Oh, no," he said, and for a moment she was strongly reminded of a conversation in they'd had outside a soup kitchen in Houston. "He – ah – he left a letter explaining everything. Just like my dad did when he abandoned me and my mom," he continued, brightly.

It wasn't sadness he was hiding, that was plain enough to see on the surface, but boiling anger. She stared at him for a moment, lost for words.

"He addressed it to you," she guessed, and he nodded sadly.

"Yeah – um," he sniffed, compressing his lips. "You know, Gideon stood toe-to-toe with some of the – the sickest people on the planet." He swallowed. "I think that took a lot of courage, right?"

"Yeah," she said, wondering where this was going.

"So – um – why'd he do this?" he asked and pulled out the letter.

Emily realised it must have been in his pocket all along.

"It's addressed to me, but I'm – I'm not – I'm not the only one he abandoned."

"But _why_ is it addressed to you?" Emily asked.

He gave her a blank, angry look. He kept negative things so well hidden the rest of the time. She realised that the ease with which they all could normally read his emotions was almost a cover in itself.

"I think you need to read that letter again."

There is was, that look that said she had no idea what she was talking about. He declined to say it out loud this time, though.

"I have an eidetic memory, Emily," he said, instead.

"Yeah," she nodded, "I know, and an IQ of one hundred and eighty-seven, but what do you remember about your father?"

He frowned; she'd caught him off-guard.

"What do you mean?" he asked, and the confusion had made him calmer – or at least, chased the anger further beneath the surface, where it was less visible.

"Well, he gave you ten years before he left, and yet you've erased all those memories," she said. "And, it's too painful, I get it – but then Gideon leaves…"

He looked vulnerable now, a side of her friend that he hadn't shown her (or any of them, as far as she knew), since before Thanksgiving. She hoped that meant she'd got through to him.

"I think you need to read that letter again, and ask yourself why of all the people he walked away from, did he only explain himself to one person? You."

She walked off, hoping that this time he would listen, instead of pushing them away.

0o0

"Morgan said this was the Laundromat closest to Patrick Walker's apartment building," she said, walking in the door. The smell of laundry detergent and hot metal hit her, taking her right back to her college days. She brushed the memory off. "So, we have washers and dryers – _and_ – oh, we have a bulletin board."

She scanned it; this looked more hopeful.

Spencer had reverted to his cheery, 'I'm okay', holding pattern again.

"Snack machine," he said, holding up a bag of something.

She marvelled at the speed with which he had got them.

"Yeah," she said, sarcastically. "I don't think he's luring them with pretzels."

"Mmm," he agreed, through a pretzel. He read the ads; "Babysitter, buy a car…"

"Ooh, look at this baby," said Emily, pulling down a bright yellow notice. "Participate in a controlled research project and you'll receive one hundred bucks to get over your anxiety," she read aloud.

"You only have to attend two sessions?"

"Two hours of your time? One hundred bucks?" Emily remarked. "Easy sell."

"Just one stub's taken," said Reid, reaching over her to point it out.

"Hey," said Morgan, joining them. "Well, Patrick Walker just joined a pretty sweet boxing gym, but that's about it. You guys find anythin'?"

Emily passed him the flyer.

"Woah," he said, running his eyes over it. "Alright, I think we should go over to victim number two's coffee shop, see if any of these are hangin' round there."

"If all our victims saw these flyers, we just figured out how he casts his net."

"Let's do it."

0o0o0o0

They had swung by the grave site to see how the excavation was progressing, finding Pearce perched on the rocks overlooking the site, watching the meticulous work below. There had been something distant about her face that had kept Morgan from disturbing her and he and Prentiss had spoken to Agent Calvert instead. He had twelve more bodies to worry about, making it even more important to get this guy – and soon.

Calvert had taken him aside at a quiet moment and asked him how Pearce had known. She had been so sure that there would be twelve, he'd said, obviously spooked. It had made Morgan uncomfortable, though he had told Calvert that it was something to do with her background in forensics. Hotch had been keeping an eye on Pearce the evening before, and that concerned him too.

Right now, however, he had other things to worry about.

"Babygirl, there is nothin' to know," he said, into his phone. "I hit a couple of buttons, it got stuck. There's nothin' to know." He groaned inwardly at the speed at which gossip travelled at the BAU, particularly anywhere near Penelope. "That's it, what do you want?"

"_And?_"

"Okay, I freaked out," he admitted, aware he was going to get nowhere until he did. "A little bit."

Garcia giggled.

"Look-it you little busybody," he said, too amused to be really irritated. "I know you traced that number for me five minutes ago, so give it up."

0o0

*See Moments of Grace, Season Three, Act Three, No Mortal Lock.


	8. Lion-Hearted Girls

_**Posting a bit early this week as my adventures take me away from the land of computers and such. Should be back to the usual Fanfiction Friday by next week!**_

_**0**_

**Essential listening – Rabbit Heart (Raise it up), by Florence and the Machine**

**0o0**

They were back, inevitably it seemed, in the conference room.

Grace leaned against the wall, glad to be out of the sun. Someone had let Reid have a white board marker and a board, which she felt might be a bad idea, since he had a tendency to doodle fearsomely difficult equations in the margins when his mind wandered. Given the speed at which that particular part of his body usually operated, this happened with reasonable frequency.

He was currently analysing the questionnaire from the so-called 'Goodman Institute'.

"Look at this, guys. He calls them 'phobias' instead of anxiety disorders."

He circled the word on the board.

"Implying they're something that can be fixed?" Grace suggested.

"Yeah, this guy's either an amateur or studied psychology in the eighties," said Emily.

"The phrasing of the questions is clinical, this guy's a professional," Morgan pointed out.

"He's able to pick the perfect victims," Hotch observed. "'Are you close to your family?' 'Easy making friends?' Answer 'yes' and you're spared the torture."

"Well, we've figured out how he chooses his victims, but that doesn't get us his real name," said Calvert, intense with the hunt.

"Alright, let's review," said Hotch, marshalling his forces. "JJ, can you get Garcia?"

JJ dialled Garcia's number on the Polycom as everyone made their way back to the table. Grace stayed put; there weren't enough chairs, for a start, and she was still feeling the echoes of the victims from the grave site. Slightly apart from her team-mates, the fading cacophony was manageable, but any closer and she would have felt stifled.

"I think the guy's a real psychiatrist," said Morgan.

"Also afraid of being alone, so he's most likely married," Emily added.

"May have adopted children," said Reid, walking around the table.

"Why?" asked Calvert, looking up.

"Uh, because the tortures lack a sexual component."

"Oh, right, he might be impotent…"

"Hey guys," Garcia picked up.

"Also, if he's desperate for a sense of community he'd definitely have kids," said Reid. He shot Grace a look before taking a seat in case she wanted it. She did not.

"Probably also involved in the community in some way," she suggested. "But more of a remote involvement – something he can feel good about doing, but doesn't have to be a part of a team for."

"'kay, I'm crossing psychiatric doctors with adoptions."

They could hear Garcia's keyboard rattling, hundreds of miles away.

"And given the obsession to control his victims with torture he might have been abused," Hotch told her.

"'kay, juvenile records are gonna be sealed, so you gotta give me a minute," said Garcia.

"Uh, he uses antiquated terms like 'phobias', so he's most likely in his forties," Emily proposed.

"_And_ the creep of the moment award goes to…" There was a pause as Garcia worked her magic. "One forty-three year old Doctor Stanley Howard, psychiatrist."

Bill Calvert frowned.

"This guy was killin' his own patients?"

"No, Stan Howard's smarter than that," said Hotch. "That's why he created Goodman and the research ruse."

"He's married to Jane Howard, has one eight year old daughter, Jessica…" Garcia paused. "He started a centre for abused kids."

"Probably because he could relate," Hotch reflected.

"Well, one good deed's not fortifying his karma," said Garcia, snarkily. "Looks like his practice shut down last year."

"Right about the time the killing started," said Hotch.

"That loss of power must have been the trigger," said Grace, glumly.

"He still has a lease on his old office building," said Garcia. "Deed permits were pulled due to renovation, but whadya know, they've been de_layed_. Yikes!" Everyone frowned at the Polycom. "His bank records show a seriously depleted savings account."

"So he's keeping up appearances," said Hotch. "Where's the building?"

"427 Cedar's Avenue."

"That's not far from here," said Calvert, getting to his feet.

"Alright, let's go check the building," said Hotch. He nodded at Emily and JJ. "You two –"

"Talk to the family, got it," Emily finished.

"Thanks Garcia!" JJ said, flicking the Polycom off.

0o0o0o0

The first address had been a wash out. It was unusual to show up intending to shake down a building that was no longer there, and it had momentarily knocked everyone off their game. Back in the SUV, Emily had given them the location of Jane Howard's commercial property.

Grace sat tersely in the back, sandwiched between Morgan and Reid and trying not to fall on either of them as Calvert cornered sharply. Not for the first time, she wished that she and the boys weren't such long legged beasts. She also wished Morgan didn't work out so damn much. Colliding with his shoulder at high speed felt rather like rebounding off a concrete block. Spencer, who was on the bonier side of solid, wasn't much better.

Resigned to her bruises, she piled out of the car after them, the agents swarming up to the building like a congregation late for mass – albeit a mass that required them to be armed and prepared to shoot somebody.

"There are no tenants in this building, these must be fake names," said Calvert, gesturing at the board full of 'personnel' in the foyer.

"Helps with the ruse," said Morgan. "Goodman's on the fifth floor."

"We'll take the elevators – Pearce, take the stairs," Hotch ordered. "Let us know if he's on the move."

Grace didn't need telling twice; she sprinted towards the stairwell.

She was four floors up and gaining, strafing around ever corner, when Hotch radioed through that the fake office was empty. Something metallic clanked above her and she looked up: the shadow of a man was moving up the staircase a few floors above her.

"I got someone," she hissed, into her tiny wrist radio. "East stairwell. Can't see his face."

"Keep him in sight," Hotch's voice said in her ear. "We're on our way."

"On about the sixth floor," she advised, quietly. "Moving upwards."

She moved off in pursuit, keeping her gun trained on the shadow, climbing the stairs a couple of floors up. She was on the sixth floor, her mark on the eighth, when a door banged open below her. Morgan's shout made Howard pause to look down.

Grace kept moving as quietly as she could, slinking up the stairs like an overgrown cat. Howard was unlikely to go quietly.

She could hear Hotch and Morgan clattering up the stairs behind her, muffling her own, fluid movements. If she could just maintain the element of surprise –

Howard picked up the pace as she got within feet of him.

"Don't move, Doctor Howard," she snapped.

The man span around, astonished. He'd clearly thought that his pursuers were much further behind him. She recognised a panicked psychopath when she saw one. Still, she was relatively sure he wasn't armed.

That wasn't his style.

"Lie down on the ground, Doctor Howard, hands on your head if you please," she commanded.

As she had expected, he moved to comply, almost as if his body had responded to the voice of authority without reference to its owner's brain. She moved to cuff him, but he bolted up the remaining flight of stairs between them and the roof, taking her by surprise.

Grace roared a curse and shot after him. He was moving too quickly to take him down using her more unofficial talents – that was the last thought she had before he reached the top and wrenched the metal gate open.

Grace, hot on his heels, had the brief impression of a panicked expression before Doctor Howard slammed the gate into her face.

The force of it knocked her backwards, and for a moment she was falling entirely through air before her foot made contact with one of the steps and she toppled down the rest of them. She came to rest at the corner of the stairwell and smacked her head against the concrete with a sickening crunch.

Momentarily, the world went white; everything tasted of iron.

Instinctively, Grace swung herself onto all fours. The world swirled back into view, the floor beneath her sliding backwards and forwards. She blinked, clutching at her face with one hand.

It really bloody hurt.

There seemed to be a lot of shouting coming from somewhere nearby.

Grace wiped at her eyes, trying to work out what was obscuring her vision – her hand came away wet and red. She blinked at it, stupidly.

Someone pushed her back into a sitting position.

"Pearce! Pearce, you okay?"

Agent Morgan's face swam urgently into her vision and Grace remembered where she was, and what she was supposed to be doing.

"Roof," she managed. "Go – I'm okay. Go."

He hurried up the last few steps after Hotch, leaving her propped up against the wall. Grace squinted at the stairs. Was that really all she'd fallen down?

It didn't seem nearly enough…

She tried to get up, found that moving caused a jarring pain in her elbow and quickly sat back down, waiting for the dancing lights to subside. There was a weird, irritating buzzing in her head.

The voices of her teammates drifted down from the hot, sunny rooftop above, still trying to bring their quarry in, even knowing that he wouldn't surrender control unless he absolutely had to.

The silence fell just before Reid and Calvert reached her. She closed her eyes, knowing with sickening clarity that Doctor Howard had just jumped to his death. She had to admit, he wasn't someone she felt the need to mourn, though she felt bad for his wife and little girl.

A hand on her shoulder dragged her back to reality – she opened her eyes to find both Reid and Agent Calvert peering worriedly down at her.

"Grace?"

Spencer was saying something about focussing on him.

"'m okay," she said again. "Jus' knocked abou' a bit."

"You're slurring," Reid pointed out.

Behind him (or above him, Grace wasn't entirely sure), Agent Calvert was calling for an ambulance.

"We lost him," said Hotch, coming back down the stairs. "He jumped."

"You okay?" asked Morgan, concerned.

Suddenly, the little kink in the stairwell felt entirely too full of people. All four of them started saying 'Woah –' when she struggled to her feet. It was like a chorus of worried cuckoo clocks.

"You need to sit down," said Hotch's voice, oddly distorted over the throng.

He was pushing gently on her shoulder, but she brushed him off.

"I need some air," she managed to say, and everyone except Morgan backed off a little.

"Nuh-uh," he said, as she made to stumble towards the stairs. He caught her around the waist. "You're comin' with me."

0o0

They had taken the lift back down, depositing Reid and Calvert somewhere on different floors in the building.

Grace tried to think of something funny to say to Morgan about his earlier escapade, but her sentences didn't seem to be forming properly. They walked her past Doctor Howard's shattered remains, his blood forming a little stream leading to the nearest drain. Morgan made her sit down under a tree. The shade it cast was minimal, but it would do for now. She put up a token resistance, mainly for show, wishing she'd been a bit slower off the mark in that stairwell.

"Sit," said Morgan. "Stay."

"Woof."

He ignored her and rejoined Calvert and Hotch a little way away.

Grace closed her eyes again, clutching her head. She let the voices of her colleagues wash over her.

"They found a Missy Cassell's car in a parking lot next to the building," Calvert was saying. "Howard's is around back"

"Before he jumped he said that my biggest fear was not being able to save everybody," said Hotch, thinking out loud.

"Hotch, this guy wasn't right in the head," said Morgan.

_Thank you, Agent Obvious,_ Grace thought dimly.

"No, I know that," Hotch interrupted. "But what I think he meant was that she's here somewhere."

Grace's frown deepened. They had to find her. She tried to stand up again, but slumped back against the tree, forced to concede that right now she wasn't much help to anybody. She heard the door slam open and squinted over in time to see Reid emerge from the building at some speed.

He stopped abruptly when caught sight of Howard's corpse, a look of horror forming on his usually cheerful face. It pulled him up short for a moment, but he quickly recovered, still staring at the murderer's face.

"I went though all of his journals and found Missy's," he said.

"What did it say?" asked Hotch, urgently.

"She was going on a cave diving trip – uh – she wasn't scared of the water, but she was terrified of the walls crumbling down on her."

"So what was she afraid of?" Calvert asked.

"Being buried alive," Reid told him.

"_Basement!_" Grace shouted, from under her tree. "Look in the Basement!"

The four agents turned on a hair and scrambled back inside the building.

"I'll stay here and – er – guard the corpse," she glared in the direction of the late, unlamented remains of Stanley Howard.

She didn't believe in hell in a traditional sense, thinking that it was more of a creation of human imagination than anything else, but if she ever saw it, she decided, she'd check that Dr Howard was still serving time there. If anyone deserved fire and brimstone, he did.

Her gaze shifted to the road as an ambulance screeched around the corner. Two paramedics sprang out as soon as it had come to a halt and made a bee-line for her. She waved them away.

"There's a woman in the basement who's been buried alive," she called. "Take breathing equipment. I can wait."

The two men hesitated for a moment before spinning around, one heading straight for the building, the other back to the ambulance for their kit.,

She watched them go, hoping that they weren't too late.

0o0o0o0

"Are you sure you're okay?"

"I swear to God, Reid, if you try to make me focus on your fingers one more time I'll throw you off this bloody jet."

"Children," JJ commented, tolerantly, as she passed their table.

"Head injuries are no laughing matter!" he protested indignantly. "Last year alone, nearly fifty thousand people died from concussion or other traumatic brain injuries."*

"Morgan, he's quoting statistics at me, make him stop," she whined.

Morgan's head appeared over the back of the seat behind Reid.

"Okay, Pretty Boy, leave her alone," he said. "The doctors cleared her hours ago."

He winked at Grace, who gave him a painful smile. Reid glared at him. He'd been hovering around her like a gangly mother hen since they'd pulled Missy Cassell out of the bottom of that lift shaft back in Portland. It was the same behaviour she'd seen when the Lonely Heart Killer had knocked Emily for six back in Wisconsin; it was both irritating and endearing. It was difficult to stay annoyed at him for too long, though the pain in her face was making his behaviour grate more than usual.

Grumpily, he subsided; Morgan went back to his file and Grace rested her aching head against the cool glass of the jet window. She admired the view.

"I'm getting used to being so high up," she mused, aloud.

"You're afraid of heights?" Reid asked, surprised.

"No," Grace cracked a weary grin. "Just falling from them."

The corners of his mouth turned upwards slightly.

"Aeroplanes, more than heights, anyway. Speaking of which," she said, making herself more comfortable. "You never told me why you called me – it was when you were stuck in the lift with Morgan, right?"

Spencer nodded. There was something evasive about the expression in his eyes, which made her want to press the subject.

"Uh – yeah. It – it was an accident," he said, hurriedly. "I – uh – had my cell phone out when it – it dropped us."

"It _dropped _you?" Grace gasped, horrified. Absently, she wondered why Reid would blush so fiercely at that. She would have been terrified. "Urgh – I would have been trying to claw my way out!"

He gave her a worried grin.

"We pretty much did," he admitted, relaxing slightly.

"No wonder you freaked out."

"Is this the elevator?" Emily asked, dropping into the seat beside her.

"Yeah," said Grace, as Reid blushed even harder. "It dropped them."

"It _dropped _you?" Emily's eyebrows shot skywards. "Woah."

"About ten feet," Spencer admitted. "But not all at once."

"_Woah._"

"I don't think you'd get me in another lift," Grace observed, and then winced.

Raising an eyebrow has had unexpected consequences, given the bruising.

"Tch-yeah," Reid chuckled. "I had to make myself look up the load-bearing capacity of elevator cables last night."

Emily and Grace laughed.

Encouraged, he went on: "Did you know, the first elevator was built by Archimedes in around 236BC?" he asked, excited. "There were several later versions, including one in 1000BC in Islamic Spain – but early lifts weren't installed in palaces in England and France until the seventeenth century. The first screw drive elevator – that wasn't based on a – a hoist or winder – was designed by the Russian engineer and inventor, Ivan Kulibin, and installed in the Winter Palace in Moscow in 1793. It wasn't until the industrial revolution that more modern elevators came into being."

He said all of this very fast.

"Good," said Grace, perfunctorily.

"I'm not a fan of scorpions," Emily told her, before Reid could start again.

"I've never really come across them," said Grace, "but I imagine I wouldn't be particularly comfortable if I was in the same room as one."

Emily shuddered.

"It's not just the sting," she said. "I just… I don't know. They're not like anything else."

"You know they fluoresce under UV light?" Reid asked, not in the least put out that his previous topic had been shut down. "There's a chemical in their carapace that reflects it."

"Yeah, something about amplifying their eyesight," Grace recalled.

"That's the current theory."

Grace playfully tapped Emily on the arm.

"Hah – you could used them as nightlights."

"Urgh. That's going straight into my nightmares, thank you."

Reid and Grace laughed.

"I don't even like the way they move."

Spencer nodded.

"Our minds are predisposed to instinctively mistrust that which is alien," Reid observed. "It's why so many people freak out about spiders – they don't move like anything we're used to."

"Plus there's the fight or flight response," Grace remarked. "I mean, some spiders are poisonous, after all."

"Yeah, but sometimes it all gets messed up and you end up with people who're afraid of clowns," said Emily.

"I don't like clowns," said Reid.

"Now why does that not surprise me?" Emily laughed.

"No, I'm with Spencer here. There's something inherently sinister about clowns," said Grace. "Something to do with the face paint…"

"It's a mask thing," Reid put in.

"Either way, they always look like they're up to something."

Emily laughed at them both until they joined in.

"Growing up, I knew someone who had anxiety attacks around bananas," Grace recalled.

"_Bananas_?"

"Surprisingly common allergy, apparently."

"As a fear, though, that's pretty rare," said Reid. "I knew a girl in college who was mortally afraid of the sound of tin foil."

"Really?"

"Some people have a thing about the sound of polystyrene or balloons," Emily nodded. "Oh, I dated this one guy who couldn't bear terracotta. He couldn't even touch it – it made him physically sick."

"It's incredible what fear can do," Grace nodded. "My friend Alice – my old Guv's daughter – she used to get an actual skin reaction to meeting new people."

"Wow, that's pretty drastic," Emily frowned.

"Well, she had it rough," Grace explained, sadly. "Her parents were murdered when she was little. She hid in a cupboard while it happened. She was five."

Emily and Reid screwed up their faces.

"Yeesh."

"The Guv' worked their case. She wouldn't even talk at first, but she always trusted him. He's a solid sort of person, really. He adopted her after the murderers went away. He always did take in strays."

"Like you?" Emily teased, and Grace flashed her a painful smile.

"Oh, absolutely," she laughed. "Alice is doing much better now…"

"She can talk to people?" Reid asked, thoughtfully.

"Yeah – still clams up around strangers and we can't get her to leave either the Guv's house or Cross Bones, but I think she's incredible," Grace told them, proudly.

"Cross Bones?" Emily asked.

"Our nick," she said, after a moment. "It was next to the old Cross Bones graveyard in Southwark. The name kind of stuck."

"She'll move between the two, though?" Spencer asked; he'd obviously been trying to profile Alice in the back of his mind. "Unusual for agoraphobics."

"Not willingly," Grace chuckled. "She made a camp in the basement for months because the Guv' practically never left. I gave her my old flat when I left."

"You lived in the station?" Emily asked. "I could _not_ do that."

"Above it. Well, that's London for you," she said. "Everything's on top of everything else. Anyway, it was handy."

She turned her attention back to the window again, rubbing her head. There was a lot about her time in that flat that she would rather forget.

Spencer mumbled something about agoraphobia and she smiled at him.

"It's far simpler than that," she told him. "Alice told me once that she didn't have a lot of different fears and phobias. Just the one."

"What was it?" Reid asked, interested.

"Everything."

0o0o0o0

_She had taken refuge behind the knackered old sofa that lived at the far end of the office, her long legs stretched out in front of her. She was staring straight ahead. If anyone had cared to look they would have thought she couldn't hear them. _

_As usual, as soon as Grace and her more stalwart defenders were out of sight, half the team had started discussing her personal life. Alice knew better._

_She and a handful of close friends had been with Grace all through those bitter months, and there wasn't a thing that was said about her these days that held a grain of truth. It was as if the people who had worked with her for years had suddenly decided that rumour was more trustworthy than experience._

_Alice hated them for it._

_Moving silent and unnoticed through the busy office – just another part of the wallpaper, as far as most of Cross Bones was concerned – she sat quietly beside Grace, tucking her knees up to her chest. She wished everyone on the other side of the sofa would just shut up. Grace had been through enough already._

_Ten years her senior, Grace had become Alice's confidante, her staunchest defender; her best friend. It was rather like having a big sister, and Alice (after a week of initial terror which Grace had blithely ignored) loved her for it. She had always seemed so strong…_

"_Just ignore them," said Alice quietly, glancing at her friend's face. It was carefully blank, as it always seemed to be, these days._

_Grace shrugged; Alice examined her shoes._

_There had been a time when someone talking smack about Grace would have earned them an ice cube down the back of their shirt at the very least, or a devastating right hook. She had been legendary, in fact, for speaking her mind – often when she probably shouldn't have. She had not been known to suffer fools gladly. Not anymore._

_For nearly a year and a half now, Grace had been alarmingly silent._

_At work she was professional and faultlessly polite. Off duty, she had become a ghost, stalking the halls of Cross Bones at night, ensuring that it couldn't ever happen again._

_Alice understood._

_No one could lose so much in such a short space of time and stay intact – and working with a group of people for whom suspicion was a base-state of being, she could well appreciate why Grace had chosen to pretend that their chatter passed over her head._

_She missed the old Grace – the mad, silly woman who snuck cupcakes up to her room when Alice wasn't feeling well, or giggled uncontrollably at all the least appropriate moments, or danced with her on the roof of Cross Bones in the rain, telling Alice that they were dancing on starlight. She made every terror Alice had ever experienced seem manageable – conquerable._

"_What are you afraid of, Alice?"_

_Grace had been quiet for so long that the question took Alice by surprise._

"_Outside," she said, scrunching up her toes inside her shoes. "People. Everything."_

_Grace nodded slowly. She didn't see to feel like saying any more, so Alice fell silent again._

_She could hear Roger complaining loudly about Grace's lack of work ethic. Alice frowned, angrily. Grace in put in more than her fair share of work – she always had. She even _lived_ in the station now, putting in extra hours when everyone else had gone home. _

_Alice glanced at her friend, wishing that she'd spring up, leap over the sofa and sock Roger in the eye._

_The old Grace would have._

_Alice stretched out her legs, measuring them against Grace's. There had been a time when she'd though the woman beside her was a giant, but the older Alice got, the more she found herself catching up with her surrogate sister. She snuck another glance at her. _

_A lot of things had changed recently. Alice couldn't shake the unsettling feeling that Grace was retreating – running away._

"_What are _you_ afraid of?" she asked, curious and a little concerned._

"_Never going outside again," said Grace, softly – so softly that Alice almost missed it. "Myself. I don't know…"_

_She ran a hand through her hair, which was growing back out. It was a gesture of real frustration, and more emotion than Alice had seen from her friend in a while._

"_I have to get out of here."_

_Alice looked up, sharply._

"_You _can't_ leave!" she gasped, horrified._

I'll go mad without you.

_Someone at the other end of the office roared with laughter and Grace glanced at the back of the sofa._

"_I can't stay here," she told her._

_Alice would have argued, but she had seen the pain in the older woman's eyes._

"_No, I suppose not," she said instead, trying not to panic._

_However much she needed Grace to stay, it was painfully obvious why she couldn't._

_This place was killing her._

0o0o0o0

Grace looked up from her book at the knock on the door.

"It's open," she called, getting up to stretch.

Apart from her bruises (which were at the really interesting purple stage) she felt great. She'd sat up on the jet, long after most of the others had gone to sleep, and come to a decision as the wheels had hit the tarmac at Quantico. Forced home to recover from her encounter with the metal gate, she had slept, dreamlessly, for the first time in more than a year.

She had slept for nearly a full day and night, and woken to a series of concerned text messages from Garcia, JJ and Reid. Twenty minutes later, Morgan and Emily had shown up at her door with take out and a stack of DVDs.

It had made Grace feel very comfortable, being someone people cared about again.

"Hey," said Reid, sticking his head around her kitchen door. "You ready to go?"

She caught him wincing at her bruises and ignored it. They didn't hurt nearly as much as they had the night before.

"Almost."

Reid watched her as she pulled out a backpack and tucked her shopping list in her pocket, an air of excitement about him.

"Do they have a book stall at this market, by any chance?" she asked, giving him a perspicacious look.

He grinned.

"Maybe. There's a pretty sweet candy store, too."

"Aside from the whole FBI thing, did you grow up at all?" she smirked.

He frowned, unsure how to take her mildly anarchic personality.

"Uh…"

Grace laughed.

"Me either," she smiled, falling into step beside him. "Being an adult is so over-rated."

He waited politely amongst the roses while she locked the door, their dusky scent filling the air like a cloud. When she turned, she found him watching her, his head titled slightly to one side as if she was a particularly tricky crossword.

"What?"

Spencer hesitated before he spoke, as if he were taking care over his choice of words.

"You seem – uh – different," he said, slowly.

"Different how?"

"I don't know… Just – different," he repeated. "More – more _you_."

He frowned, as if he was aware that this hadn't made a great deal of sense.

Grace compressed her lips; she hadn't thought she'd been that easy to profile – but then, she hadn't really been operating at full capacity for quite some time.

"You know what I realised yesterday?" she said, setting off down the path.

"That – uh – metal gates and your face shouldn't be introduced to one another at speed?"

"Hah!" she laughed and whapped his arm; he rewarded her with a cheeky smile. "No, I realised that fear is a choice."

They paused at her gate. He gave her a penetrating look.

"And you've decided – not to be afraid anymore?"

His smile broadened as she grinned.

"Come on," she said, "Tell me about that sweet shop."

0o0

_-But you said there was no defence._

_-"There ain't."_

_-Then what do I do?_

_-"Know it, and go on out the yard. Go on."_

_ \- Excerpt from Beloved, by Toni Morrison_

0o0

***Thanks for the help with the stats, Bonesy!**


	9. Children of the Dark

_**Shorter chapter this week, guys, 'cause less needed to be said. More next week! I'd just like to take this moment to thank my anonymous and guest reviewers, who I can't thank through the normal channels : ) Your support means a lot, folks, thank you! (Especially stars like dianikis, who has checked in a couple of times 3 ) Pxx**_

**0**

**Essential listening – Lullaby, by Shawn Mullins**

**0o0**

It didn't matter how long you did this job, Grace mused, it never got easier when it came to children. She frowned down at the crime scene photos.

They looked almost peaceful, the two Halbert boys, but Grace was under no illusion that their last moments had been anything other than fearful.

"Home invasions typically involve the elderly and single females," Reid observed. "The fact that entire families are being killed suggests multiple UnSubs."

They had decided to complete their case review on the jet once Emily had noticed the significant acceleration of their cycle. If they wanted to stop another family from being murdered they would have to work fast.

"Could be gang-related, Morgan suggested. "Revenge motive, personal business."

"I don't think any of these victims are running in gang-circles," said JJ.

Grace had to agree. Unless these families had all banded together to combat crime in their area they were unlikely targets for gang violence. So far there was nothing to suggest that any of the families knew one another. The kids didn't even go to the same schools.

"Sewing circles more like it," Emily agreed. "PTA moms, grey-flannel dads – these guys are killing _The Cleavers_."

Grace looked up. Sensing there may be pop-culture that she was missing here, she leaned over to Morgan.

"Cleavers?"

"Old TV show about the perfect suburban life," he told her.

"Strange."

Hotch glanced at Reid.

"A pattern?" he asked.

"No, _The Cleavers_," Reid mused. "Of all the names for a 1950s idyllic TV family, it's rife with violent implications. Kinda makes you wonder how the writers really felt about suburbia, huh?"

"You never know what's going on in the house next door," Grace observed.

"Focus, please."

Reid winced as Hotch brought them back to task.

"Uh, okay," Emily began, "what about, um, class-based uprising? Helter Skelter?"

"There's no graffiti," Morgan argued. "No messages – at least, not visible ones. There's no ritual."

"Yeah, Manson's aim was to start a race war," Reid reminded them. "There's no proof of any hate crime here."

"Oh, I don't know," Grace supposed, looking at the wholesale slaughter in the living room. "I think I'd call _that_ hate."

Hotch nodded.

"The parent murders are brutal. The instruments vary, uh –" he flicked through the crime scene photos. "Golf club, kitchen knife, iron…"

"Household implements, symbols of family," Morgan theorised.

"Weapons of opportunity," Grace put in.

"But the kids were different," said JJ. "They died by injection. Pento-Barbitol."

"It's a barbiturate," Reid told them. "Sometimes used as an anti-convulsant for epileptics, anxiety disorders – and state executions."

"Look at how they're laid out on their beds," said Grace. "Like they've been put to sleep."

"The invasions are well-planned," said Hotch. "Phone lines are cut, ligature marks show the parents were bound and gagged."

"Looks like these guys had some robbing experience," Morgan observed.

Emily nodded.

"And then found their true calling."

0o0o0o0

They filed wearily onto the jet.

Of all the ways the case could have ended. This was probably the best: no further casualties, both UnSubs caught and an instant investigation of the Mainwarings by child services – all children seized.

Grace, Emily and Morgan had helped clear the kids out of the Mainwarings' house. The differences in behaviour and neglect between the boys and girls had been obvious. Clearly, Mrs Mainwaring had only cared for her girls.

It was going to be a while before they would get the image of a house with locks on every cupboard and all those pictures that Todd had destroyed out of their minds. So many photographs of apparently happy children.

"Tell me they restocked the bar?" Morgan sighed, as they piled on board.

"I called ahead," said JJ, not far behind.

Grace flopped down on the bench seat. As soon as they were airborne she wanted to be flat out and as far away from Cherry Creek, Colorado as her mind would let her be. Since the plane couldn't go fast enough she would have to make do with New Urath and Roger Zelazny.

She could hear Hotch quietly asking to hear the sound of his son's voice; Spencer was already absorbed in a chess puzzle he'd been working on. It had been a tough case all round.

JJ settled into the seat across from Emily, opposite the bench. All three women sighed.

"You okay?" JJ asked.

"Yeah," said Emily.

Neither Grace or JJ believed her. Emily looked lost. Grace had heard about her offer to take Carrie and she understood the other agent's sadness. Adoption was an enormous burden for a single, working woman to contemplate, but when you'd gone to that place in your mind it was difficult to back away from it again.

Just for a few minutes today, Emily had thought she might be a surrogate mother.

Knowing full well that she wouldn't be able to say anything to make her feel better, Grace got up and headed to the minibar, giving JJ the privacy she needed to help their friend. She always seemed to know what to say – it was JJ's forte.

It really wasn't Grace's.

"Starting already?" she joked.

Morgan was already pouring himself a scotch.

"Long day."

"_Long_ day."

She pulled out three glasses and made up three rum and cokes. Morgan made no comment, but she noticed that he, too, was carrying extra measures when he passed her, presumably for Reid and Hotch.

She took the drinks back to the table, hoping she'd given JJ enough time. They exchanged a speaking look.

Whatever JJ had done _had_ helped – Emily was less rigid than before – but she was still staring despondently out of the window.

_Okay_, though Grace, and pulled out her phone. _Desperate times call for desperate measures…_

By the time the answering text came through, the pilot was about ready for take off and the women had been sipping their drinks in an uncomfortable sort of silence. JJ was rummaging for snacks in the kitchen. Both she and Emily looked up on Grace's laugh.

"Well, that settles it," she said and grinned at Emily, who began to look wary.

"What?"

"You, me, JJ," she nodded at her, "and Garcia."

"What about us?"

"Cocktail bar, soon as we land." She flashed her phone at Emily. "Garcia's got us on some VIP list."

"Ooh, that's going to be messy," said JJ, sitting back down. She gave Grace a wry smile.

Grace looked at Emily, expectantly. She could see that her resolve was already wavering.

"Come on," she urged. "We'll drink brightly coloured things with silly names, we'll do karaoke…"

Emily gave something approaching a laugh and nodded, resigned.

"Good job we're not working tomorrow, then," she offered.

"If we're going out, I'm gonna need a nap," JJ declared, making a pillow out of her coat and jamming it against the wall of the jet.

"Capital idea," Grace congratulated her. She pulled out her book.

The next time she glanced up at Emily, her smile looked a little more genuine than before, a little less forced.

Grinning inwardly, she made herself as comfortable as she could be while upright on the bench and waited for take off.

_The things I do for my team_, she thought.


	10. Seven Seconds

**Essential listening – America's Suitehearts, by Fallout Boy**

**0o0**

Grace was impressed at how quickly the mall, with its many entrances and exits, had been locked down. The Bureau's rapid deployment team had rolled out, got everyone calmed down and contained, and the building locked down in under fourteen minutes.

Then Franklin, who most of the team knew by name or reputation, had called Hotch, who had called JJ, who had got them all out of their back yards and living rooms and into the cars of whomever lived nearest.

It was one of the bonuses of a case coming up in Virginia, Grace thought. They could be on the scene, as it were, after even the barest hint of trouble, and everyone knew how vital the first twenty-four hours after a child abduction could be.

"What've you got?"

Franklin was waiting for them; he and the other members of his team were on high alert, ready to hand them all radios and run through a briefing.

"We've been in lockdown for almost twenty minutes," Franklin told them. "My team's already in motion."

"Another female, same age, same time of day, taken from essentially the same location," Prentiss summarised.

Grace accepted a radio from one of the CARD team members, who peeled off to rejoin the containment team. She clipped it to her hip.

"What makes you sure Katie Jacobs is still in the building?" Morgan asked.

"The mall's got cameras installed at every entrance and exit," Director Franklin explained briskly. "Surveillance video confirms Katie entering the building, but no sign of her leaving. Security paged her over the intercom and the initial sweep came up empty."

"Whoever killed Jessica Davies last week left that mall with her because he wanted time with his victim, and privacy," said Reid.

"Assuming it's the same offender he wouldn't stray from his MO," Hotch qualified. "He wouldn't leave here without his victim."

"Unless he panicked when he heard her name paged," Grace argued.

No-one needed her to finish the thought. They'd all seen the pictures of Jessica Davies; Katie Jacobs was only six.

"Either way," said Hotch, "our priority is Katie, right now."

"And if Katie's still under this roof, so is her abductor," said JJ.

"Garcia, report to the mall security office," barked Hotch, issuing commands. "Reid, Morgan, I want you to find the Head of Security, I need all data from every search team. Pearce –"

Her head raised slightly in acknowledgement.

"I want you to liaise with Franklin's search teams, try to cover as much ground as you can. You guys start with Katie's parents," Hotch continued, modelling to Prentiss and JJ. "We'll treat them all as a neighbourhood," he instructed, as they made to hurry off to their allotted destinations. "We'll separate into areas of control."

He caught Grace's arm as she made to stride away and pulled her to one side.

"Will your – uh –" he glanced at Franklin, who was doing his best not to eavesdrop "– be any use here?"

"Not if she's alive."

"Let me know." He gave her a brisk nod and released her arm. "As much ground as you can."

She nearly saluted.

0o0

The floorplans for the mall – and there were five of them, one for each level including basement and roof – were vast. So big you couldn't lay them all out on one table. Spencer grimaced at the sheer enormity of the task ahead. That was a lot of hiding places.

"One hundred and seventeen stores, sixty-nine storage closets, seventy-three dressing rooms, six men's rooms, six ladies' rooms," Ms Samuels, head of mall security listed, pointing them out. "Access to the roof via the North and South stairwells. Seven restaurants, each with separate kitchen and four elevators."

Morgan nodded, frowning deeply.

"Every team's gonna need a copy o' this," he said.

Spencer hoped the copies would be smaller, for everybody's sake.

0o0

"Katie was last seen by her cousin in the arcade about twenty minutes ago," Agent Valencia was briefing them on the run and Emily appreciated her efficiency. "She was wearing jeans, a green skirt, grey sneakers and ponytails."

Their progress across the food court was briefly halted by a local officer with a sheaf of paper.

"Registered offenders located within a forty-five mile radius," he said passing it to Emily, who looked it over and gave it right back.

"Okay, run this against current and former employees as well," she said, and they took off again.

They didn't have time to waste.

0o0

"You'll be with the Delta team," said her escort, nodding in the direction of the fourth of the CARD teams on the scene.

They were suited and booted, and ready for action; a couple of them looked at Grace as though they suspected that she, in her blouse and slacks, was not. Wisely, they kept their mouths shut.

"You're BAU?" the nearest human tank rumbled. He had a pleasant speaking voice that surprised her. She found herself wondering what he and his team looked like out of all that body armour.

Hell, she'd probably passed them in the corridor.

"Mmm-hmm," she said, eyeing them up. Behind their visors, she suspected they were doing the same. Fortunately, their leader was one of those agents who had been in the FBI long enough to know that anyone with 'SSA' in front of their name was good enough at their job to be trusted.

"SSA Ivan Summers. CARD Delta team Unit Chief."

"SSA Grace Pearce, BAU. General pain in the arse."

They shook hands; the man behind the helmet grinned.

"Got much search and rescue experience?"

Grace tied her hair back in a business-like sort of way.

"You could call it that…"

0o0

"This animal so much as looks at me wrong when we get him," Franklin growled, leaving the statement open, but not subject to any doubt.

Hotch glanced at his friend.

"I read the Jessica Davies report, I know you found the remains last week," he said, as they climbed the escalator, eyes on the crowd.

"Twenty years, never seen anything like it," he said, and Hotch could hear the tension there. Odds were, James Franklin was not sleeping well at night. "Can't get the image outta my head. I joined the Bureau to rescue people, not stand over another dead kid today. I couldn't handle it."

"Well, hopefully you won't have to."

They surveyed the huddles of bewildered, frightened people below them. Any one of them might have taken Katie Jacobs; any one of them might have stashed her away somewhere until the heat cooled off.

_Or worse._

"It's all chance, really," Franklin observed, bitterly. "Wrong place and the wrong time. No logic. No sense." He sighed. "How's a parent reconcile that?"

Hotch frowned.

"They never do."

0o0

He was looking at her like she'd grown a second head. While she was aware her general aura of awesomeness was too much for some people to handle, Penelope didn't think that this was the case in this instance. The guy was verging on the sarcastic and she knew she'd wounded his professional pride by asking, but really there was no time for niceties right now. Somebody's baby was missing.

"You want every inch of surveillance footage?" he asked, incredulous.

Penelope felt like smacking him around the back of his head, but instead she pressed her lips together and took a breath before replying, in an effort to bolster her karma.

"Yes," she said, exasperated. "Because I need to examine it frame by frame to see if there's anything in the background you guys missed." She didn't have time for this. She marched over to her equipment and started setting it up. "I also need a joystick controller, video transmitters, a coaxial cable and a programmable port*." She paused. Her spider senses were telling her nothing was happening behind her. "And I don't mean that hypothetically."

She snapped her fingers at him, hoping he got the message, and got to work.

0o0

"Mrs Jacobs' cell phone had Katie's picture on it," said Agent Valencia, handing a copy to them both. JJ felt her stomach clench. The girl in the photo looked so small. "Mall security helped us make copies."

"Okay," said Emily. "We need to get one of these to every search team, every officer, every patron – potential witnesses need to know who we're looking for, too."

Agent Valencia nodded and hurried away.

JJ watched her go, glad they had CARD on the ground this time.

"The problem is," Emily mused, looking around. "Our UnSub could be any one of them."

JJ shook her head. A situation like this was impossible to call. Her eyes lighted on several adults clustered around one of the columns, alongside a teenage boy. All five of them looked like they were under extreme stress. One of the men had an arm around his wife, who was crying through sheer terror. JJ glanced at Emily, knowing she would follow her.

"There's her parents."

They reached them roughly as the local officer who had been with them stepped away, which was good. It meant they had their full attention. She took a deep breath. Keeping them all on track in a situation like this was going to be an uphill struggle.

"Hi, we're agents Jareau and Prentiss, with the BAU," she said, trying to keep her voice in that golden range between professional and compassionate that kept people listening. She nodded to the two other adults; there was enough similarity between the men to be brothers. "You must be Katie's aunt and uncle. This can't be easy. We're here to walk you through this."

0o0

The full scale reproduction of the mall blueprints was going on all around them. Derek studied the maps with a sinking heart.

"Well, aside from the stairwells, storage closet and hundreds of shops, there's a whole underbelly beneath our feet." It was hard not to sound too defeated, but realistically the mall was an abductor's dream. If he kept out of the way of the search teams and kept moving through the service areas he could probably stay hidden for a week, and all the while, little Katie Jacobs would be at his mercy. "Subterranean levels, air ducts, boiler rooms…"

"Realistically, it'll take at least three hours to cover this place," Ms Samuels told them.

_Damn_.

"Realistically, we have less than half that," he said aloud.

It pulled Samuels up short.

"How do you figure?" she asked with greater anxiety than before.

"Ninety-nine percent of abducted children who are killed die with in the first twenty-fours hours," Reid explained. "Seventy-five percent with in the first three hours, and last week – as law enforcement knows – Jessica Davies joined the forty-four percent of children abducted and killed with in the first hour."

Derek's phone went off and he answered it, hoping for good news.

"Yeah, whaddya got?"

0o0

"Okay, so this is surveillance footage off an exit camera outside the arcade," Garcia told him as he leaned over her screens.

"Well, can't you get a better angle?" he asked, staring at the black and white image.

"Sugar, I'm not London here," Garcia told him, huffily. "I can only work with what they have – and believe me when I tell you the 1980s just called. They want their security system back. Okay," she took a breath and pointed at the screen. "Look in the far right middle section, see the two ponytails?"

"Yeah, that's Katie," said Derek, heavily.

"Angle barely got an image of her, let alone who she was with."

"Can you enhance the image for me?"

Garcia stared at him like he was a crazy person and he guessed that this was one feat of technical wizardry too far, even for the sorceress that was Penelope Garcia.

"I can start the process," she told him, balking a little, "but we don't have that kinda time."

Derek sighed, staring at the last, grainy image of Katie Jacobs.

"Oh you are breakin' my heart baby girl," he said, heavily. "Where are you goin'?"

"And who are you with?"

0o0

"Katie?"

"Katie Jacobs?"

"Katie?"

They jogged through the basement level of the mall, checking air ducts, cupboards, even under desks. They couldn't afford to leave any stone unturned.

The CARD team were thorough and efficient, and Grace would have felt proud to know them, if she'd had time to think. Her world was fast becoming a maze of anonymous service tunnels. How much engineering did the underside of one shopping centre need, anyway?

"Katie Jacobs?"

"Katie?"

Moving swiftly through the packed, grimy service rooms, every member of Delta team listened out for any response, however weak, but all they heard was their own footfalls, echoing off the walls.

They passed by the door to the next section, an arbitrary demarcation of an area searched; SSA Summers called it in as clear. He caught Grace's expression.

"What?"

She shook her head, frowning. There was a lot of ground to cover here.

Too much.

"I just keep worrying that she might not be able to call out," she said slowly, glancing up at Ivan Summers' worried face, just visible beneath the visor. "Has the rapid deployment team got access to any K9 units?"

0o0o0o0

*My other half assures me that this list of stuff would not do what she makes it do. I'll put it down to her overwhelming aura of awesomeness :)


	11. Reasonable Doubt

**Essential listening – Help I'm Alive, by Metric**

**0o0**

_Dostoyevsky once said, "Nothing is easier than denouncing the evildoer. Nothing more difficult than understanding him."_

0o0

Time was moving so quickly. It was one of those days where it seemed to speed up and slow down of its own accord. An illusion of how tense they all were. The laws of physics couldn't be ignored so easily, no matter what Grace seemed to think.

For a moment he wondered whether the rules might change in a place so full of people whose spirits were all so taut with expectation or fear, like a football stadium, or a school exam room. There were many theories about how far the human mind could influence its surroundings, and if all of them were focussed on the same thing at once.

Spencer frowned, aware that he was in danger of getting caught up in a metaphysical argument in his own head. He had to focus.

Morgan was escorting their victim's cousin over to one of the mall offices that could be pressed into service as an interrogation room. It had just the right amount of formality to it, which was good. They didn't want to frighten Jeremy. Not yet.

It had been Emily's idea to separate him from his parents, both of whom were in such a state of distress right now that it was impossible to hold a meaningful conversation with the boy. As the last person to spend time with Katie before her abduction, they badly needed to have that conversation.

Spencer gave the kid a worried smile as Morgan escorted him through the door; he already had a sort of wide-eyed look of panic about him. Guilt, Spencer guessed, about not keeping a better watch over his cousin.

He waited until Jeremy settled before beginning.

"Jeremy, we asked your Mom and Dad if we could talk privately," he said. "Thought it might be easier that way."

"'Cause my dad thinks this is my fault."

Spencer didn't miss the tone of resentment; Jeremy was a smart kid – probably smarter than his dad realised. He was only thirteen – he didn't need this hanging over him for the rest of his life. That kind of guilt could really screw a person up.

"No," said Spencer. "Jeremy, your dad is just super upset right now, because at times like this people get really emotional."

_He doesn't mean it_, he added, privately.

Jeremy shot him a shrewd look that told him both that he didn't believe a word of it and that he had appreciated the effort. The subject was clearly making him uncomfortable, though, and he withdrew behind his hair when Morgan crouched down beside him.

"Hey kid," Morgan said, making him look up and make eye contact. "The moments right before a kidnappin' like this are the most important. You gotta understood that you're the only one who can help us with that."

Jeremy looked earnest, but worried. It was a lot of weight to thrust on a young kid's shoulders.

"But – but I can't remember –" he began.

Spencer cut him off.

"Jeremy, all we need," he said, leaving forward, "is the last thing Katie did or said before she was gone."

He frowned. His words were having an unexpected effect on the boy, who was shaking his head, fearfully. Tears sprung to Jeremy's eyes and he got to his feet.

"Jeremy?" Morgan asked, sharing a look of concern with Spencer. "Jeremy?"

The boy clutched at his chest; his breathing was shallow and coming in gasps now. Did Jeremy have asthma, like his cousin? Morgan grabbed his shoulder.

"What? What? What?" Morgan asked, urgently. "What is it? Talk to me! What?"

"Can't breathe –" Jeremy managed.

"Uh – uh, you're – you're having a panic attack," Spencer told him, taking his other shoulder. "Sit down –"

"Jeremy, sit down," said Morgan, more gently, guiding him back to his seat. "Sit down. Okay. Watch it. Put your head between your knees, put your head between your knees. That's right," he said, holding the boy in place. "Just breathe. Just breathe."

He met Spencer's eyes, alarmed.

Jeremy knew something about Katie's disappearance, that was for sure – but what?

0o0

"Yeah, they're just coming now," Grace said, into her mobile. "Five minutes…"

She listened for a moment as JJ relayed what information she could. They weren't getting anywhere. She started moving again while she listened, keeping pace with Delta team as they searched every nook and cranny, hollering the little girl's name.

"Right," she said. "Okay. Hey, JJ? Can you get something of Katie's for when the search dogs get here?"

She heard the wince in JJ's voice as she hung up.

Grace did not envy her that task.

0o0

Extracting the sweater from Beth Jacobs had been less traumatic than JJ had expected. No one needs to hear that their best shot at finding their daughter is a K9 unit, especially when that sweater was their only tangible link to her right now.

They'd taken the decision to run an appeal over the speakers pretty well, too, though she could tell they were both terrified. She could almost feel it coursing through them as she watched Garcia setting up. It would help them to be doing something.

Mr Jacobs had deferred the dubious honour of the speech to his wife, perhaps recognising that he was likely to lose his cool over the tannoy and potentially put his daughter in more danger. JJ was privately quite relieved. She would have had to ask him to stay silent in any case – the UnSub was more likely to listen to a female voice.

Beth Jacobs was steeling herself, now she had a task to perform, a way to try to help her daughter, she was calmer.

"Do you have kids?" she asked, catching JJ off guard.

She was looking for common ground, she realised, trying to make this feel more normal, more manageable. Beginning to put her trust in these people who she'd never met.

"No, not yet," JJ told her. She could feel both parents watching her, wondering how she could ever understand. "But everyone that needs us – we think of as our own."

They both nodded slightly, reassured that the team would do their best for their child. JJ glanced at her watch, hoping that their best would go a little faster. It was already dark outside. Without her inhaler, Katie Jacobs didn't have that kind of time.

"I don't know if I can do this," Mrs Jacobs shook her head, fearful.

"Okay," said JJ, as Mr Jacobs touched his wife's face – a tiny gesture of affection that gave her the strength she would need. They were in this together. "Just stay calm. Don't address what he's done, that'll only make him defensive."

Garcia tapped her on the shoulder.

"Jayj, I'm ready."

"Just," she paused, gently moving Beth Jacobs forward. "Keep the focus on Katie, right? We need him to hear who she is. No one knows that better than you."

She watched the woman collect herself.

0o0

The loud speakers burst into life as Delta team moved into the ground floor. It was a woman's voice, quiet and afraid. For a moment it held them all in place, listening to a mother's anguish.

"My name is Beth Jacobs. Forty-five minutes ago, our daughter Katie went missing. She's only six years old. Last month she started first grade."

Grace turned her face away from the others, looking out across the eerie stillness of the mall. At the end of the walkway they were on, a single balloon drifted peacefully over a children's play area, devoid of life. She stared at the airy thing, hanging in the air like a lost soul.

"Katie is our only child and we love her very much. We just want her back safe."

_Where are you, baby?_

"The other day, Katie told me that she was ready to ride –" Mrs Jacobs' voice hitched and Grace's heart gave a squeeze "– a big girl's bike." She could hear the woman's tears now. "Without training wheels. And I promised her that she could do that on her birthday."

She sobbed and Grace clapped her hands together.

"Come on," she said, to Agent Summers. "Let's keep moving."

_Someone's got to bring her little girl back._

"Please, wherever you are," Beth Jacobs pleaded, as the team began to search the Taco Bell. "I hope you're listening. We just want our daughter – back to us safely. Katie is just a little girl – she's just a little girl who deserves another birthday."

"Katie!"

"Katie Jacobs?"

Grace allowed herself to fall behind the group, unwilling to let them see the tears decorating her own cheeks. She scrubbed them away, angrily. There was no time for that, now. She more than understood a mother's pain, but right now somebody else's baby needed her.

0o0

Garcia had called him away from co-ordinating the search for a new titbit. He leaned over the back of her chair, hungry for any development that might help them.

"It's only seven seconds I was able to decipher," said Garcia. "But it's seven more than we had."

She clicked something with the joystick that had magically appeared on her makeshift desk.

"What are we looking at?" Hotch frowned.

"Surveillance footage I retrieved off a second camera on the first floor," she explained, changing the angle. "It shows Katie exiting the arcade, follows her movements through the crowd. She went North –"

An error message flashed up on the screen: 'UNABLE TO LOCATE MATCHING SUBJECT'.

Hotch heard himself tut.

"Until she disappears."

"For the life of me I can't work out who she was with."

"Seven seconds." Hotch shook his head.

"All the images I could find, sir –"

"That's all it takes for a child to disappear," he complained.

"If Katie was alone, the only stores in the vicinity she would be walking toward would be furniture, stationery, or bedding."

"Nothing a six year old would leave an arcade for," he said, and paused. "Unless… it wasn't a store that caught her eye."

"I once followed Todd Cortell the entire length of Silver Beach because he had a kite," said Garcia, seeing where he was going.

"The right bait might lure her away from the crowd," he said, and hurried off. They needed to speak to the kids from the arcade again.

0o0

Jeremy was calmer now, in the familiar surroundings of the arcade. After his panic attack, Spencer had been afraid that he would fear them, but happily this didn't appear to be the case. Their rapid reaction seemed, instead, to have earned them a little of his trust.

He was still holding back, but Morgan's diagnosis of an acute anxiety disorder meant they had to tread carefully. It was possible that Jeremy couldn't tell them anything because he really couldn't remember, and pushing him might do more harm than good.

"So what are you youngsters playin' these days?" Morgan asked, keeping his tone friendly, engaging.

"I like… DOA," said Jeremy, still a little self-conscious.

"DOA," Morgan repeated, and Spencer realised the other agent didn't know what it stood for. "As in 'Dead on Arrival'?"

"It's 'Dead or Alive'," said Spencer, sharing a conspiratorial grin with Jeremy.

"What do you like so much about it, Jeremy?" Morgan asked.

"The close combat," he said, with more confidence than they had yet seen. "It's all about timing, how well you know your enemies."

_He's profiling them_, Spencer realised.

"Plus, I'm – um," Jeremy gave them a small grin. "Really good at it."

Morgan chuckled.

"Yeah, I bet you are, kid." There was a slight, but palpable, change in atmosphere as Morgan guided the conversation towards the case. "So – uh, what was the first game that you walked to when you came in here?"

Jeremy led them straight to the great, hulking machine that was _Dead or Alive_. It was just as Spencer remembered it, from the few times he had frequented an arcade in his younger years, complete with the enormous plastic guns that made your hands feel far too small, and the looming zombies.

When they'd locked down the mall, security had escorted the staff out of the arcade before they could turn off any of the machines. The constantly looping animation of zombies lurching out from every shadow was still playing. Spencer could well imagine that a six year old girl might have been less than impressed by being made to watch her cousin playing this.

Morgan got Jeremy to stand in front of it, leaning his hands on the case as if he was about to play. The agents positioned themselves either side of him, where they had an unobstructed view of his face and body language.

"I'm'nna ask you to close your eyes for a minute, Jeremy," said Morgan, and the boy immediately complied. "Alright, I want you to go back to when you first walked in the arcade earlier – can you remember that?"

Spencer crossed his arms, leaning against the _Dead or Alive_ machine. The slightest of frowns crossed Jeremy's face. He was putting himself back in the moment, doing what he could to help Katie. It was a positive sign.

"Yeah," he said.

"You're doin' great, my man," Morgan encouraged. "'kay, in your mind I want you to try and picture what it sounded like in here. Picture what it smelled like."

Jeremy swallowed, beginning to lose his awareness of the two men who were staring so intently at him.

"Was it crowded?" Morgan probed.

"It was loud," said Jeremy.

"Were the people loud, or were the sound effects loud?" Spencer asked.

"Both. Some kid was yelling at his game… so was I."

"Where was Katie?" Morgan asked.

"Right next to me." He made a movement with his right hand and Spencer glanced at the space beside him. Jeremy started chewing the inside of his mouth; Spencer frowned.

"What's making you so uncomfortable, Jeremy?"

"Katie was upset," he told them, slowly. "She was crying."

"What was she crying about?"

"I – I don't remember… I – couldn't hear."

Spencer compressed his lips together. Jeremy was obviously lying. He had a shrewd suspicion that whatever she had been crying about was his fault. Maybe she'd wanted to leave the arcade and Jeremy had said no. Whatever it was, it was weighing on him now."

"Okay," said Morgan, looming in, sensing the boy's discomfort. "Jeremy, go back to the video game," he instructed.

Jeremy's face immediately cleared; a small smile crossed his face.

"I was winning."

Morgan's mouth slid up in amusement.

"And how'd that make you feel?" he asked.

"Awesome," said Jeremy, promptly. "Proud of myself. Kind of embarrassed…" he added, and started to worry at the inside of his mouth again.

"Embarrassed? How?"

"Like… people were watching me." The worried frown that spread over Jeremy's features also took up residence on the faces of the agents either side of him.

_Interesting._

"Why were you self-conscious, who was watching you?" Morgan asked, quickly.

"I could smell her shampoo," Jeremy said, almost to himself.

"Katie's?" Morgan asked. Jeremy shook her head.

"No. There was a – a girl," he said. From the way he said it, Spencer imagined that this was quite a pretty girl, maybe even a little older. "She came over…"

"Did she talk to you or to Katie?" Morgan asked.

"To me."

He even stood slightly taller when he said it. Spencer raised an eyebrow: a _very_ pretty girl.

"She said I was good at the game, and I offered to let her play – double team – but Katie was crying and the girl went away." A sudden thought seemed to have struck him. "Katie wanted ice cream. When I looked around…" he opened his eyes. "She was gone."

"Katie was askin' for ice cream?" Morgan asked.

"Yeah," said Jeremy, who seemed surprised at his own memory. He was still holding something back, though, and that was worrying.

"Is there something else?" Spencer asked, gently.

Jeremy chewed the side of his mouth.

"No."

Spencer nodded, wondering whether he'd been this obvious at lying at Jeremy's age.

"You did good, kid."


	12. The Pretty Girl Equation

**Essential Listening – The Moment I Said It, by Imogen Heap**

**0o0**

Morgan had pulled her off the search with the news that they'd found the little girl's necklace, and that both he and Hotch had a job for her. She waited in the little conference room off the main mall security office.

Although she was glad to take a break from all the charging around, she couldn't help feeling a little disconcerted by the sudden change in pace.

"You searched their house?" she asked, to keep from worrying about a lost six year old.

"Obvious signs of abuse," said Morgan. "But not at home."

"The uncle or cousin," Grace nodded, slowly.

_Oh God…_

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about –" Morgan began, but Hotch swooped in and he broke off.

"Morgan, you and Reid concentrate on Jeremy," he said. "Prentiss and I will work on the uncle."

He looked expectantly at Morgan, who glanced at Grace.

"But – uh –"

"She'll catch you up."

"Okay…" said Morgan, shooting her a questioning look.

She shrugged.

Hotch waited until they were alone, before asking, "Anything unusual?"

Grace frowned for a moment, confused, before she realised what he meant. Most things in their line of work were unusual, after all.

"Oh," she said, cottoning on. "Er, nothing related to our case."

He gave her the kind of look that told her he wasn't sure how to phrase the question.

"Any… witnesses?" he asked, eventually. Grace shook her head.

"They didn't see her."

"Right," said Hotch, briskly pulling out an evidence bag. "This is Katie's. Someone ripped it off her and stuffed it in a trash can by the food court. Can you get anything from it?"

Grace took the necklace out of the bag and concentrated. The memory of the gold tasted metallic in her mind.

"Lot of conflict," she said. "Not much else. There'd be more if she'd died wearing it – and really you ought to ask someone unfamiliar with the case to get a read on it."

"A question of bias," he nodded, understanding. "Conflict?"

"As if she wasn't sure how she felt about it," she qualified. "And someone else _really_ hated it."

"So it meant something to someone in her life."

"Her abductor?"

"I hope so." Hotch sighed, frustrated. "The more we find out, the further from finding Katie we seem to get. Go help Morgan – he's got an idea about the cousin."

0o0

"You want me to _what?_"

Her colleagues shifted uncomfortably.

"We need to determine if his preference is for girls Katie's age, or…" Reid faltered. "Pr-pretty girls in general."

"So you're asking me to walk in there and – what? Flirt with a thirteen year old boy?" Reid wouldn't meet her eyes, so she turned to Morgan. "Do you not think this might be considered, I don't know, kind of inappropriate?"

"Not flirt," said Morgan, quickly. "Just… distract him. Knock him off his game."

"It's the – the pretty girl equation," said Reid, awkwardly.

Grace stared at him. She folded her arms.

"Okay, I'll bite," she said. "What's the 'pretty girl equation'?"

"Any heterosexual thirteen year old boy will be distracted by an attractive woman," Morgan explained. Grace thought she could detect a little wariness in his body language, as if he wasn't sure how she'd react. "Unless his predilections lie elsewhere. If he's distracted by you we can rule out primary involvement in his cousin's abduction. The motive's clearly got something to do with the abuse."

Reid cleared his throat.

"You're the youngest female team member."

"And Jeremy's already met JJ and Prentiss," Morgan added. "He already sees them as authority figures."

"And he'll see me as what, exactly?" Grace asked, eyebrows raised.

He and Reid shared a look.

"I realise this is an unusual tactic," Morgan offered, after a moment.

"Downright skeezy, more like," Grace remarked, looking away, annoyed. She huffed, "But we do need to rule him out – and fast. Alright," she agreed, reluctantly. "How do you want to do this?"

"Kid," said Morgan and Reid. "Go make him uncomfortable."

0o0

Spencer sat down across from Jeremy and considered him for a moment.

_Make him uncomfortable. Okay…_

"What's going on?" Jeremy asked.

Spencer fiddled with his tie, considering his opening. A good interrogation was like a game of chess, Gideon had told him. The conversation felt like it had taken place long ago, almost in another world.

"Did you find Katie?"

He seemed genuinely concerned, but that didn't put him out of the running. Not yet.

"Jeremy, how old are you?" Spencer asked.

"Thirteen," he said, confused.

"Thirteen," Spencer repeated, recollecting with no fondness whatsoever, how awkward he had been at that age. "Wow. You know, when I was thirteen, I was starting to notice girls, too."

Jeremy suddenly looked like he wanted the ground to open up and swallow him. Spencer knew exactly how he felt. This was an uncomfortable conversation all round. He pressed on.

"I was curious, but – uh," he chuckled. "I was, like, really awkward, so it was super hard for me to talk to them – and I – uh – I found that incredibly frustrating."

"Why're you telling me this?" Jeremy asked, blushing crimson. He'd folded his arms in front of his chest and retreated back behind his fringe.

"'Cause I think I understand you," Spencer told him. "You're – uh – you're in the arcade, a pretty girl walks in and – uh, you get distracted by the – uh – the scent of her hair, right?"

Jeremy was avoiding his gaze now, chewing hard on the inside of his mouth. Clearly, Spencer had touched a nerve.

"I guess," Jeremy allowed. "So what?"

He chuckled again.

"So you're – you're becoming a man," he said. "it's – hah – believe it or not it happens to all of us. There's nothing wrong with that at all."

"Never said there was," said Jeremy, who looked like he couldn't decide if he should be afraid or confused. He went with defensive.

"And these video games that you play," Spencer continued, scooting his chair forward and leaning on the table. "These cool video games allow you to – um," he looked right at Jeremy, who looked away. "To explore your violent side, right? So, I mean, clearly you're intrigued, but my only question is whether or not you've acted on these curiosities? You've – uh – experimented yet?"

Jeremy cast around for a way to make the conversation stop.

"Shouldn't you be looking for my cousin right now?"

Spencer considered him for a moment.

"I _am_ looking for your cousin right now."

"Why are you asking me these questions?"

"Why are you avoiding them?"

Jeremy didn't answer. Behind him, beyond the glass, he saw Morgan and Grace take up position by the door, waiting for his nod.

_Not yet_, he thought. _Not just yet._

"Hey Jeremy, do you know what I do for the FBI?"

"No," he muttered, with the barest shake of his head.

"I study human behaviour," Spencer told him. Jeremy began to inch his chair away from him, clearly on edge now. "Like, uh – the way you're pushing your chair away from me? It tells me that what I'm saying is making you uncomfortable." He leaned on the table, making up the inches of distance Jeremy had gained. "Like – uh – like you're trying to distance yourself from me. Maybe what I'm capable of reading about you."

"Whatever," Jeremy murmured, chewing on his cheek again.

"Case in point," Spencer said, nodding at him. "You bite your inner cheek. It's uh – it's a nervous tic, like you're – uh – holding onto something. You're doing it right now."

Jeremy held his mouth still, staring at the far wall.

"You were also doing it at the arcade."

He watched with some satisfaction as Jeremy's eyes slid over to him, involuntarily.

"I think you were doing it may_be_ – I don't know – maybe because you remembered something more than what you told us."

"No," Jeremy quickly denied. Too quickly. "I told you everything."

"I don't know," said Spencer, slowly, crossing his arms. "I don't think you told us everything."

He met Grace's eyes through the glass; she slipped into the room. Jeremy whirled in his seat, clearly hoping for salvation.

"Don't mind me," said Grace, and walked straight to the drinks machines.

"Jeremy," said Spencer, and the boy turned back towards him, evasive and clearly afraid. "I think something else happened in that arcade. Something – something you haven't told anybody yet."

Jeremy squirmed.

0o0

Morgan folded his arms.

Grace had left the door just open enough that he could hear every word of the interview going on inside. From the way Jeremy Jacobs was hunched over, Reid had hit the nail on the head. He watched his fellow agent stare the boy down for a few, long minutes until Pearce made her approach.

She was right, this was unorthodox, but it was their best shot for ruling Jeremy out quickly.

She dropped a can of soda in front of Spencer, then another in front of Jeremy, commanding the boy's full attention. Finally, she extracted a third can from her back pocket and opened it, taking a long drink.

Jeremy was staring at her; Spencer was watching him.

"Figured you boys could do with a drink," she said.

"How's it going?" Spencer asked, leaning back and letting Jeremy stew.

"No luck," she said, with just the right amount of heaviness to keep Jeremy hoping and make him really worried. "The rapid response teams are clearing floors pretty swiftly, but if Katie's some place we can't see, she may not be able to call out."

Even though he had his back to Morgan, he could see Jeremy squirming. Either he felt guilty about what he'd done, or he was genuinely upset about his cousin. Pearce leaned against the table, her hand inches from Jeremy's. The back of the boy's neck began to turn pink.

She moved away, settling on the edge of the table, just behind Reid.

"Have you been able to remember anything else, Jeremy?"

Jeremy shook his head, not saying a word. Reid's eyebrow twitched upwards; something about the set of Grace's jaw indicated that she didn't believe him either. He wondered whether Jeremy could tell.

"It's okay," she said, lightly. "Situations like these are always stressful – we know you're trying to do your best for your cousin."

She leaned forward, over Reid's shoulder, to retrieve her can of soda from the table. The move, he suspected, had been intentional, designed to make Jeremy feel like he was trusted, like the agents were being candid with him. It also allowed him (and Morgan, for that matter) an improved _view_, as it were. Not that Pearce was wearing anything provocative, but when you were thirteen, a little thing like that wouldn't matter at all.

Jeremy leaned forward, too, unconsciously; Grace's proximity was having the desired effect. It looked like they could rule Jeremy out as Katie's abuser.

He frowned. Her proximity seemed to be having a rather more unexpected effect on Reid, too. The younger agent was colouring, slowly, as his colleague leaned over him, her hair possibly tickling his neck. He glanced at her, moistening his lips.

Morgan tried not to laugh.

0o0

Grace nodded and turned away, job done.

She glanced at Morgan, who seconded the nod and departed, heading to Hotch or JJ to update them. Jeremy toyed with the top of his drinks can. He was definitely holding something back, as Reid and Morgan had said.

Maybe she could scare it out of him.

"Have you heard of Jamie Bulger?" she asked, wedging her feet in the back of Reid's chair. The other agent glanced in her direction, but stayed quiet. They needed to use every angle they could, here.

"No," said Jeremy, frowning.

Grace nodded slowly, taking her time.

"Maybe it's a more of a British thing," she reflected. "Growing up, every kid my age knew that name. 12th of February 1993," she continued, soberly. "Liverpool. Little Jamie Bulger, two and a half years old, went shopping with his mum."

Jeremy blanched. He could guess where this was going, whether he'd heard of 'Baby Jamie' or not. Her father had followed the story every night on the ten o'clock news, thinking that Grace was safely tucked up in bed. She, like most of her friends, had crept downstairs every night, fascinated and horrified in equal measure (as only a child could be) as the story of Jamie's final tortured hours had unfolded.

"She only looked away for a moment," Grace said, recalling the powerful sense of horror she had felt even then. Jeremy couldn't take his eyes off hers as she spoke, as if hypnotised. "Two lads, not much older than I was then, lured him away. About forty witnesses saw them walk him through the shopping centre and away along the canal, but everyone assumed they were looking after a little brother. Nothing in their behaviour stood out."

She met Jeremy's gaze, giving him a hard look.

"I'm not going to tell you what happened to that little boy – it's not a pretty story. The point is, we understand how short a time it takes for a child to be led away from the person they're with, no matter how grown up or careful they are. And that sometimes it's the people you least expect who can't be trusted."

Jeremy swallowed hard.

"Jeremy, was there anyone in the arcade you'd had problems with before?" Reid asked. The boy turned to him, wide-eyed, and shook his head. "Any kids who looked like trouble – who you, maybe, knew instinctively not to speak to?"

Another negative.

"Okay," said Grace, thinking aloud. "What about people Katie might trust?" she asked. "Older girls, maybe, who might be nice to a little girl who doesn't like being in an arcade yet? Someone who didn't mean to hurt her, maybe, but who she would feel safe going for an ice cream with – until they get bored of having a little girl with them and just leave her there?"

"There were a couple of girls near the racing games," he offered, eventually. "But Katie wouldn't have gone anywhere with someone she didn't know. She's smart."

"So it has to be someone she _does_ know?" Reid asked.

Jeremy paled.

0o0

"He's not going to tell us, is he?" Grace asked, frustrated.

Jeremy had clammed up again and they'd left him to stew a little more. There wasn't any point putting him under further pressure.

"No," Reid sighed. "I don't – I don't think he's involved. Which means –"

"He's protecting someone," Grace finished, with a huff of frustration. "Probably one of his parents."

She swore.

"You know, even if we do find Katie alive, this family is going to be in ruins before we're done."

Reid nodded sadly. For a moment, Grace thought he might be about to speak, but he seemed to think better of it, looking back into the security room where Jeremy was doing a credible impression of Not Freaking Out.

"I should get back to the search teams," she said, but the door to the security office banged open before she could move.

"Pearce, you're with me!" Morgan bellowed. "Katie's aunt just confessed to takin' her," he added in a much quieter voice, mindful of Jeremy's proximity.

"Where –" Reid began to ask, but Morgan was already on his way back out of the door.

Grace followed, at some speed. They joined Hotch and Director Franklin, along with one of the search teams, all running towards one of the vast seasonal storage 'closets' out the back of the mall, an area that had yet to be searched. Katie had been tied up and gagged for several hours now, and with her asthma…

The music hit her when they reached the third floor – a cheery Disney tune that caught Grace's breath. If she could hear _that_, then –

"No, no, no, no, _no_!" she cried aloud, turning her run into a flat out sprint, following the sound. She tore through the random junk in the storage closet, wrenching tables out of the way and climbing over a giant foam clown face that looked like it belonged in a museum of the damned. Morgan and Hotch were hot on her heels.

"Alright, take it apart guys – every box, every shelf!" Hotch ordered.

The happy little tune in Grace's head increased in volume as the search team burst into the room behind them, all yelling Katie's name. Grace clambered over to a series of lockers in the very back.

"Morgan, give me a hand –"

Together, they lifted a large metal filing cabinet out of the way of the very last locker. Hotch pulled open the door.

"_I got her!_" he yelled, bending down. "I got her!"

He and Morgan lifted her out, as gently as they could, her small frame half concealed under a couple of emergency blankets and an Easter Bunny costume.

"Alright, we need a medic!" Morgan shouted, turning to the search team, who scattered in search of the paramedics they'd had on standby for hours. "Somebody! Move! Let's go!"

Her heart thudding dully in her chest, Grace watched as Hotch knelt over the tiny girl and gently peeled back the duct tape covering her mouth. She could see another little girl, too, a couple of paces behind Director Franklin, the perfect replica of Katie Jacobs, crystallised at six years old.

She heard someone radio JJ and tell her to get Katie's parents up here fast, and then realised it was her. The world around her seemed oddly muted, except for the small, watchful child behind Director Franklin's legs; her corporeal counterpart wasn't breathing.

"I can't find a pulse!" said Hotch, urgently. Morgan took Katie's head in his hands, laying down gently, making sure there were no head injuries. "Dip her head back, open her airways up," Hotch instructed. "Ready? One – two – three –"

The echo intently watched the two agents give her CPR, the music of her afterlife filling Grace's head.

Two paramedics shuffled them out of the way in a business-like fashion. In a matter of seconds, Katie's body was hooked up to a portable heart monitor, and oxygen mask swamping her tiny face.

"Come on, Katie," said Hotch, still continuing gentle chest compressions.

Morgan had been pressed into service holding a drip – one of the paramedics was attaching it to the little girl as the other supplied her with air. Grace looked on, helpless, as the heart monitor gave out its shrill, endless tone.

"Come on," she hissed, under her breath.

Hurried footfalls made her glance up – JJ and Katie's parents ran into the room and froze, terrified, pulled up short by the sight of their pale, motionless child, that long, awful sound filling the air.

"Katie?" Beth Jacobs cried.

"Come on, sweetie! Come on, sweetie!" Katie's father urged. "Wake up."

Her mother started to cry.

The hearts of the entire team were beating as one, now, willing the little girl on the filthy carpet of the storeroom to breathe –

Grace closed her eyes and the world seemed to _squeeze_ for a moment. She opened them in time to catch a glimpse of Katie's echo winking out of sight – on the floor, a second after, the heart monitor beeped – then beeped again. Katie coughed.

The entire room took one, desperate breath of relief along with her.

Grace closed her eyes again, aware of the slight prickle at their corners.

That had been close.

0o0

They stood with Jeremy in the cold night air, watching his parents being marched, handcuffed, to separate police cars. His mother, currently being piloted by Emily, looked particularly defeated. Spencer wondered whether there was anything any of them could say that would begin to make this okay for him. He rather doubted it.

"Is Katie gonna be alright?" Jeremy asked and Morgan nodded.

"She will eventually."

They watched as the boy met his mother's eyes, felt the chasm opening up between them.

"I heard her call my mom's name," he told them, open for the first time in hours. "That's what I remembered before."

The agents shared a glance.

"We get it, kid," Morgan assured him. "It's your mom."

"What's gonna happen to me now?" he asked, as though the question had only just come into his head.

Explaining what his father had done to Katie had been one of the hardest things Spencer had ever had to do.

"I don't know, Jeremy," he said, honestly. "But – uh – we're gonna make sure you're alright, okay?"

Morgan beckoned to him as the car from social services pulled up.

"Let's go," Spencer said, putting a brotherly arm around the boy's shoulders and walking him away from both his parents.

Seeing both parents arrested on the same night – especially given their crimes…

Jeremy had a hard road ahead of him. The least they could do was try to set him on it safely.


	13. About Face

**Essential listening – Home, by Daughtry**

**0o0**

_Erasmus wrote, "What else is the whole life of mortals but a sort of comedy, in which the various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks, walk on and plays each one his part until the manager waves him off the stage."_

0o0

There was a pumpkin full of candy on her desk when she got in, along with a model of a skeleton that looked like he had been caught mid-pirouette. It grinned up at her conspiratorially.

Grace stared at them.

She glanced around the bullpen, which was empty and dark at this early hour. Several of the neighbouring desks held the commercial accoutrements of Samhain. They looked marvellously out of place on the sober and orderly desks of her fellow FBI agents. The level of frivolity seemed utterly alien here, in a way that it wouldn't elsewhere, as if some mischievous Halloween ghoul had flitted around the BAU overnight, joyfully wreaking havoc in the usually sedate office.

For a moment, she wondered if it might have been Penelope, but quickly dismissed the thought. Garcia, Morgan, Prentiss and Grace had been out late the night before, swapping stories about their new senior agent, a man who was legendary even in the Met. Grace had read all of his books and was curious to see what this rock star of behavioural science was like in real life. His writing style was candid and engaging, and she was hoping the general gregariousness his books hinted at would be present in the man himself.

By the time the four of them had left the bar it had been about midnight and Garcia had been asleep on her feet. There was no way she'd have been able to sneak back to the office to decorate it.

There was even a plastic ghost attached to the door of Hotch's office. The one place that had not suffered the hand of tasteless plastic decoration, she noted, was Gideon's old office. She guessed that even now that would be considered sacrilege.

She deposited the pumpkin and the skeleton on the top of her 'out' tray in the optimistic hope that one of the filing ninjas might take them away, and settled down to work.

By the time Hotch rolled in (far too early, as usual), she had made a decent headway into the stack of reports, debriefs and requests on her desk.

"Good morning," he said, clearly surprised to see anyone else at the office this early in the morning. "You're in early."

His eyes flicked to the plastic skeleton and back to her; he frowned slightly.

"They were here when I got in," she said. "I think we may have had a visit from the Halloween fairy. I couldn't sleep."

Hotch nodded in a resigned sort of way that suggested this sort of thing happened every year – and that he had a reasonable idea about the identity of the culprit.

"You alright?"

"Yeah," she smiled. "It just happens sometimes."

He nodded again. Lack of sleep was an occupational hazard around here. She watched him climb the stairs to his door and calmly remove the ghost from his door. He was still smiling faintly when he hung it on the bookshelf behind his desk.

Grace laughed. Perhaps this strange, overblown version of Halloween had its place after all.

0o0

"Uh – okay…" said Emily, dropping her bag on her desk. She picked up the large, fake spider from on top of her keyboard and gave Grace an inquisitive look.

"Don't look at me," she said. "My idea of Halloween is a private expression of respect to the dead and a party where you eat until you burst."

Emily laughed.

"I like the sound of that."

"The sound of what?" Morgan asked and then paused, taking note of the severed head on his desk. "Oh _man_, not _again_."

"I take it this happens every year then?" Grace asked Emily, who shrugged.

"I wouldn't know – I wasn't here last year."

"Every year," Morgan sank into his seat, grumpily. "Man, I hate Halloween."

Grace and Emily shared a look and decided that they didn't want to know.

There was relative peace in the bullpen for the next ten minutes as the agents went through their morning routine of checking files and clearing emails before the inevitable 8.30 briefing.

Movement caught her eye and she looked up as a ridiculously tall, skinny Frankenstein's monster, complete with noose and giant fake hands, handed candy to a grinning colleague from a large plastic cauldron.

_Ah-hah_, she thought. _The mischievous ghoul revealed._

She should have known, really – his desk was covered in pumpkins, spiders and masks. The apparition put an oversized monster finger to his lips in a conspiratorial fashion. Grace watched, fascinated, as he crept up behind Morgan, the costume giving him the confidence he usually lacked.

"Waurgh!" he growled, getting the monster head only inches behind Morgan's head. "I'm going to eat you!"

Both Grace and Emily burst out laughing as Morgan jumped out of his skin.

"_Reid!_" he complained, exasperated.

"Happy All Hallows Eve, folks," said Reid, pushing the monster head far enough off his face that he could grin at them. "To paraphrase from Celtic mythology, tomorrow night all order is suspended and the barriers between the natural and the supernatural are temporarily remooooved!"

He put on what he clearly felt was a spooky voice and flung a shrunken head at Prentiss, who caught it, laughing.

"See that right there is why Halloween creeps me out," said Morgan, clearly still in a huff from Reid getting the drop on him.

"You're scared of Halloween?" Reid asked, surprised.

"I didn't say I was scared, I said I was creeped out," said Morgan, as his team mates shared a 'yeah, we believe you', kind of look. "There's a difference there youngster, you should look it up."

Grace snorted at Reid's don't-give-me-that face.

"Don't tell me you're against Halloween, too," Reid said, eyeing the pumpkin and skeleton in Grace's 'out' tray, which were about as far from her as they could feasibly get without actually being in the bin. Grace shrugged. "I'd have thought it would be right up your alley," he sounded a little disappointed, which surprised her, but his voice lost that edge when he continued, "What with all the ghosts and _ghouls_."

Grace laughed as he waved oversized monster hands in her direction.

"You are so weird," she said, fondly, and threw a sweet at him. "I guess I see enough of the occult the rest of the year – and all this –" she gestured at the décor. "It's just window dressing."

"Window dressing can be fun," Reid said, and deposited a purple witch's hat on her head. She glared at him, an effect which was possibly spoilt by the answering smile that was developing on her face.

"You didn't celebrate Halloween in London?" Emily asked, amused.

"Not like this," she allowed, which she felt covered all the basics of the truth and absolutely none of the details. "Usually I was on duty."

She grinned properly then, realising that she wouldn't be spending all of the day in the pissing rain, lining the old drover's route out of the City of London. The thought cheered her up considerably.

"So, what creeps you out about it?" Emily asked, as Grace removed the hat and – in deference to her enthusiastic friend – balanced it jauntily on the corner of her computer monitor.

"I don't know," said Morgan, leaning back in his chair. "People wearin' masks," he shook his head. "I don't like folk in disguises."

"That's the best thing about Halloween," Reid declared. "You can be anyone you wanna be."

He tossed some candy at Morgan, who dodged it with ease.

"Nah, I'm pretty good jus' bein' me," said Morgan.

Emily grinned at Grace.

"Yeah, why is it that neither of those points of view surprise me?"

Grace laughed.

"You know what though, on the flipside," said Morgan, as though it had just occurred to him. "It does provide a pretty good reason to cosy up with a scary flick – and a little Halloween honey."

He winked. Grace rolled her eyes.

"Ew," Emily remarked, pulling a face. "Halloween honey? Now I'm creeped out."

"Guys," said Reid, in a quiet, urgent voice. "He's here…"

They followed his gaze to the agent being led through the bullpen by Erin Strauss. Grace looked over his expensive, understated suit and general air of assurance, and wondered why a man so obviously confident in this setting would ever retire. He couldn't help but smile as Reid realised he still had a Halloween mask on his head and tried to hide it behind his back.

_Promising_, Grace thought.

The team watched him climb the stairs to Hotch's office; Reid was practically bouncing on the balls of his feet.

"Stand down, fan-boy," she teased; he stuck out his tongue.

0o0

Hotch glanced up from his files when Strauss walked in, obviously hoping to main an air of professionalism despite the temperament of the man following her.

"Agent Hotchner, I'm sure you remember –" Strauss began, but she was cut off.

"Dave!" Aaron grinned.

"How are you, Aaron?" Rossi asked, beaming.

"I'm good – I'm great."

They gave each other the man hug of men who had faith in the other man's ability to keep their cases in order and colleagues alive – and their faces straight in front of Chief Strauss.

"I'd say so!"

"Saw you on TV last week," said Hotch. "Can't believe you wanna come back here."

Grinning, David Rossi shrugged, and Hotch decided that even if he was back for personal reasons they could really use the help. As one man, they turned, realising that Strauss was still watching them, aware that she was being cut out of this particular conversation. She also seemed to notice their expressions were a kind of challenge, but she chose not to rise to it.

"Well, I'll let the two of you catch up," she said, allowing herself to be dismissed. "If you need anything, I'll be in my office."

Hotch gave her a small smile; she was learning, if a little slowly. A lifetime of office politics took a while to dissipate.

"Thanks," said Rossi, as she departed.

Both men released slightly, pleased to have found an ally in one another.

"So, how long's it been?" Aaron asked, when she'd gone.

"Dinner, almost three years ago," Rossi reminded him. "But the last time I was in the BAU, you were sharing a desk with two other agents in that God awful bunker we were in."

"I remember," said Hotch, smiling.

"Congratulations," said Rossi, and meant it.

"Thanks," said Hotch, glancing around his office. "Well, there's one just like this next door, if you're interested."

He looked back to find JJ waiting for an opening.

"I'm ready to give the briefing," she told him, jerking her thumb towards the open door.

"Agent Jareau, this is SSA David Rossi," said Aaron, with a nod.

"Hi," JJ shook his hand, warmly. "Everyone calls me JJ. It is _such_ an honour to meet you, sir. I've heard a lot about you."

"Thank you," Rossi smiled, impressed. "And – what's you're function here?"

"Uh – I'm the communications coordinator and liaison – pretty much the go between for the team and the rest of the world," she added, with a grin at Hotch, who smiled back indulgently.

In many ways, without JJ, they'd be lost.

"So, I'll gather everyone?" she asked.

"We'll be right there."

"It's so nice to have you here, sir," JJ said, shaking Rossi's hand again.

"Wow," said Rossi, appreciatively, when she'd left. "We didn't have _that_ ten years ago."

"What do you mean?"

Rossi paused for a moment.

"Communications coordinator."

"Right," said Hotch, who didn't believe him for a second. He remembered Rossi's glory days; he'd have to keep an eye on that, at least to start with. "Well, a lot's changed. Come and meet the team."

0o0

By the time Hotch and Rossi emerged from the office, Grace had given up on work entirely and was perched on the edge of her desk, deep in debate with Reid about the origins of Halloween and its – in her view – flagrant commercialisation. She got to her feet as they approached, while Reid finally pulled off the rest of his 'window dressing'.

"SSA David Rossi, this is SSA Emily Prentiss," Hotch said, with a smile.

Grace hid a smirk. You could count Hotch's smiles on two hands, most months, so she took this, too, as a good sign. She watched Rossi take in her team.

"Sir," said Emily, brightly, as she shook his hand.

"SSA Derek Morgan."

"It's an honour, Agent Rossi," said Morgan, taking his turn to shake the man's hand.

"Please, just Dave," said Rossi, with an easy smile.

"SSA Grace Pearce."

"Nice to meet you, sir," she said, nodding.

His handshake was firm – not because he thought that it gave people the impression of integrity, but because Agent Rossi actually had it.

"Little far from home, aren't we?" he asked, on hearing her accent.

"Depends on where you think home is," she said, smiling.

"And Dr Spencer Reid," Hotch finished.

Grace made an effort not to roll her eyes as Reid launched into an inquisition on psycho-linguistics and the Scarsdale Strangler. Some days he did himself no favours.

Hotch decided to intercede.

"Reid, slow down," he advised. "Uh, he'll be here for a while. You can catch up with him later."

"Oh yeah, right. Right, sorry," Reid apologised at high speed.

"No problem, Doctor," said Rossi, affably.

"Maybe you guys can talk on the jet."

"Oh yeah – that'd be great!"

"The jet?" Rossi asked, surprised.

"Oh yeah," said Hotch, clearly entertained. "We have a jet now."

"Are you serious?"

Grace grinned, remembering her own surprise. She guessed that when David Rossi was last here, the department had been roughly the same size as the UCU back home.

"Yeah," said Hotch, loftily. "It comes in pretty handy. Come on," he grinned. "JJ's waiting."

0o0o0o0

"You do realise it's _November_ now?" Reid complained, shivering. "Anything you plant is going to freeze to death. Much like we are," he added darkly, under his breath.

"Not everything," Grace told him, cheerfully. "And if you're that cold you can always go inside, no one's stopping you."

She pushed her seed drill deep into the welcoming earth and smiled, happy to be outside and working with the freshly tilled soil. It even smelled good.

"Besides, it's quite warm enough a few inches down, especially for hardy things like these."

She pressed a broad bean into the shelter of the hole and covered it with a blanket of soil.

"Lucky for them," Reid muttered. Grace ignored him. "Anyway, I can't go inside if you're out here, that would be rude," he said, in a pained voice.

"You could always go home," Grace observed, and laughed, correctly interpreting his grumpy silence. He wanted to continue their earlier discussion about Halloween, and he couldn't do that on his own. "Well then, stop bloody complaining and help me get these sets in," she said, moving onto the next row.

"Grace," he said, voice full of doubt. "Anything you give me to plant is going to die."

She laughed again.

"Have a little faith in yourself, Doctor," she said. "One clove of garlic per hole, okay?"

He huffed, taking the large bulb out of her hands with obvious reluctance.

They worked together in companionable silence for a while; Grace showed him the proper distance to plant onions and winter peas. He seemed happy enough to follow instructions, though he did grumble occasionally about the cold.

"You could dig the asparagus bed instead, if you'd prefer," she offered, tartly. "That'll warm you up."

"I – um – I think I'll stick to onions, thanks," he said, shooting the spade a dubious look that made Grace tip her head back and roar with laughter.

It didn't help that he looked so cute with that cross little frown on his face, cheeks pinked from the cold. She left him to his own devices and went to swear at the asparagus bed for a bit.

"You know," he said, after a while, "I think you curse more than any person I've ever met."

Grace turned to find him watching her, speculatively. He had soil on his face now, as she did, and looked marginally more comfortable in the mud-covered chaos that pretty soon would be a working garden.

"Well, everyone needs a hobby," she grinned. "Pass me a sparrow grass?"

Spencer laughed and shook his head at her. He helped her get ten crowns of asparagus bedded down for the winter before either of them spoke again. Grace dusted her hands off, satisfied at the afternoon's work.

"That just leaves the rhubarb," she thought aloud. "Which won't come until next week anyway."

"Are you planning to feed all of Quantico?" Reid asked, amused.

"No, just me," she told him, giving him a gentle, playful shove. "I always feel better when I've got a decent garden planted. More grounded – more at home."

They smiled at one another for a moment.

"Cup of tea?"

"Thanks."

"Anyway, you know statistically speaking, people who swear a lot are more honest," she told him, pulling her wellies off.

Spencer pinned her with a look of abject incredulity. He scoffed.

"Tch-yeah, whatever. Cite your source!"

0o0

_**Well, that's all for now, folks. Bit of a weird ending, but it's been that kind of story, really. Should be putting up the first chapter of the next Ficisode, Absent Friends, next week or the week after :) Click Author Alert if you want to be the first to see it! Thanks, as usual, need to go to my regular reviewers, MuggleCreator, gossamermouse101, xenocanaan and dianikis – you lot rock more than Dobby in a sock ;) Thanks, also, to the rest of you lovely reviewers – it's a cliché, but you guys keep me writing. Toodlepip!**_


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